


Snowtouched

by Kalium



Category: Niche (Video Game)
Genre: Animals, Apes & Monkeys, Creation Myth, Cultural Differences, Developing Relationship, Divination, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/F, Family, Fluff, Gen, Genetics Sim Game, Grief/Mourning, Islands, Jannu Tribe, Leaving Home, Near Death Experiences, Novel, Ocean, Original Mythology, POV Child, Plants, Prophecy, Rainforests, Reincarnation, Seers of the Sea, Speciesism, Storms, Storytelling, Traditions, Travel, Worldbuilding, Yukir Tribe, xenofiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-07-03 21:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15827640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalium/pseuds/Kalium
Summary: For generations, a tribe of nichelings have lived on a gentle, pleasant island, with no reason to ever look elsewhere. But when Kois, the child of wanderers from an older, fragmented tribe, finds a strange white cub, she recognises the omen in front of her. It is time to leave and seek out a new life in the snow.Together with Laana, a seer who reads the future in shells and tides, she leads a small expedition in search of the frozen mountains the tribe know of only in stories. But many dangers lie between them and their new home, and they must stay together and work as a family to survive.Inspired partially by Seri the Pixel Biologist's playthroughs of Niche, however no knowledge of this series is required.





	1. Beachcombing

**Author's Note:**

> This work is mirrored on my website at <https://lilaclynx.neocities.org/snowtouched/>

The storm had passed. With clear skies overhead, streaked with nothing more than the highest and wispiest of clouds, little remained to indicate its devastation. The island shore had little to show for it except for a washed up line of debris stretching across its white sands. Seaweed, driftwood and pebbles formed a tangled tidemark that smelled of salt and fish, the scents of the deep sea from which they had been thrown. Anything of interest was already being picked through and snatched away by inquisitive crabbits. They would scramble through the mess, only to startle at the slightest provocation and turn their powerful claws toward the source of the disturbance, which more often than not would turn out to be another crabbit.

There was one threat upon the white sands that would warrant such behaviour, although she had no interest in crabbits at the present time. She was powerfully built under a deep red pelt, larger than most of her kind, and her footsteps left deep tracks in the sand that gave away her unusually large claws. As she walked along she swung her tail, revealing the bony club on the end. Her ears were pricked forward behind her curled ram horns, alert and focused. Sometimes, she would stop and pause to sniff at the driftwood, or heft it aside with her huge paws or drag it away from where it rested in her strong jaws. Water pooled in the sandy crevasses left behind, and sometimes she would sniff at it, but there were no familiar scents, nothing to hold her interest, and she would turn away to continue her journey along the shore. Three dark red gems sparkled on her chest, catching the sunlight and shining to display their bearer’s vitality.

There was nothing familiar to her on this stretch of coastline, nothing at all.

She turned her gaze inland. Here there was a little more evidence of the storm’s passing. A few trees had lost their branches, many of them hanging partway off their trunks like half broken prey limbs, still hanging on by strips of bark but revealing pale splintered wood underneath. Despite the damage, the jungle was still too dense for such a large creature as herself to go crashing through without attracting unwanted attention. Everyone told stories about the jungle, even if they’d never been there. It would be safer to keep to the shore.

She kept going, leaving a trail of deep, clawed footprints in the crisp white sand. Overhead, a bluebird wheeled. She kept an eye on it, not for her own safety – it had been a long time since she had been small enough for the bird to carry her off – but to see if it would give away the presence of other nichelings. But it flew on, over the land and out of sight, and she was forced to forget about it.

A shift in the scents on the breeze caught her attention, from the overpowering salty seas to a hint of fresh water. Her ears perked at the sound of a distant stream. As she grew closer she saw it up ahead, a small river that had reached the end of its course and flowed into the ocean. It had not had far to go, as its waters were still vigorous, cold and clear and full of little silver fish that would be a small but sustaining meal for a skilled fisher.

Her companion had been waiting for her at the banks, where dirt transitioned to sand and the river cut little braided channels through the beach. She was much smaller and leaner, her coat a bright white, although now stained by sand and dirt. A pair of small, two pronged antlers sprouted from her head, both draped with strands of translucent seaweed. She was engrossed in her current task, so much that she did not respond to the larger nicheling’s approach, who sat down in the warm sands and waited for her to finish.

The white nicheling was grappling with a clam, pinning it to the sands with one paw whilst the other, its digits more slender and dextrous, worked at the shell’s edge. She pried it open to reveal the meat inside, and sat back to study it. The sun shone upon the three blue gemstones embedded in her chest, mirrors of the sky above and the sea below.

“Kois.” She looked away from the clamshell and to the bigger, waiting nicheling. “The sea has nothing to say.”

Kois rose to her feet and sniffed at the open clamshell, but it smelled to her like so much seafood and nothing more. “I’m sorry. There was nobody along the shore, either.”

“No, there has to be… I’m just not looking hard enough!” The white nicheling pawed at her antlers, claws running through the draped seaweed. “The sea wouldn’t leave us with nothing, would it? They told us to go! No, there’s a reason for this, you’ll see.” She gazed up at the sky, letting the sunlight reflect from her gems.

“Laana.” Kois settled down by the smaller nicheling, curling her weighted tail around her paws. Laana leaned in, pressing herself against Kois’ bulk. Kois felt Laana’s antlers and their decorations brush against the thick fur of her shoulder. She closed her eyes, listening to her companion’s breathing and crash of waves on the shore. “We’ll find them.”

There was a quiet laugh from the sea-seer. “I found _you._ ”

“I know.” Kois opened her eyes. Laana was not built to swim, but Kois even less so, with her bulk and horns and hammer tail, and it was the smaller nicheling who had helped her to shore. Crossing islands was a move that came only once in a few generations. They had both grown up on stories of ancestors and the trials they had faced to find the island that had been their home. Neither of them had thought they would leave those rolling hills, full of berries to pick and rabbils to hunt. But then there had been the signs, the seers and their clams, the white furred child, and it was time to find the mountains.

The storm had put an end to all that. But thinking of where they should be would not take them there. The waves were calm, the river was fresh and cool, and the hunting was good along the shore. “We will find them, or they will find us.”


	2. Snow in the Nest

_Several months earlier:_

The rains had come and gone, leaving behind lush grasses and laden berry bushes. Now a warm sun shone upon rolling hills, scattered with rabbils nibbling at the grass. They were too small and fast for Kois to chase down, so she ignored them and left them to run as she headed instead for her favourite spot. Down gentle grassy slopes she walked, dew brushing against her fur, toward the sound of a fast flowing stream. It curved through a wide valley, and at the point where it bent around to change course and flow to the sea, there grew a grove of nut trees. Kois settled beneath them, easing herself into the hollow she had made from months of relaxing in the shade. She was too big to sneak up on rabbils, and her claws too thick and sharp to pick berries without mangling them, but her thickset jaws were perfect for cracking open nuts.

None of them had fallen in the night, but that was easy to solve. Kois raised her heavy clubbed tail and slammed it into the nearest tree trunk, gently enough to not harm the tree, but strong enough to make a few nuts fall to the ground around her. Each one was big enough that even her oversized paws could only just cover it, and a warm brown in colour with a smooth shell. Kois picked them up in her strong jaws and felt a satisfying crack as she opened them up to get to the food inside.

She ate her fill and drank from the cold stream, and was ready to slam her tail into the trunk again to shake out some more nuts to take back to her tribemates when she heard the cries.

At first she thought it was the alarm call of a rabbil about to be pounced on, but it was too high pitched even for one of those tiny prey creatures. She stood still, straining to listen over the whisper of grass and the flowing stream. It was a high squeal, faint enough that she could barely hear it, but unmistakably the sound of something in distress.

Kois waded through the stream. She shivered at the sudden cold, but kept going. There was a faint bloody scent in the air now, leading her up to a small rise where the normally gentle hills became a small ridge, just taller than Kois herself. It formed a sheltered spot away from wind and rain. If a place like this ever smelled of blood, it was because someone had chased down a rabbil and taken it back to eat in peace. But the call was louder the closer Kois came, and now she could tell that it was not a rabbil but a nicheling cub. She understood little of cubs, but pressed on through the thick grass, mindful that a young nicheling left alone was easy prey for a bluebird, and everyone knew to stay close lest they be carried away.

Shouldering the tall grass aside, she found the nest. There was indeed a little white furred cub there, but it was not alone.

“Reko?” The mother, another pale coated nicheling like the seers by the sea, was curled up around the tiny creature. He was pawing at her, letting out the high pitched cries that had drawn Kois to the scene.

Kois padded closer, and nudged Reko with her broad snout. The mother nicheling’s body was stiff and cold. Kois recoiled. She’d seen the scene before her, understood what must have happened, but she had held onto hope that maybe Reko was just exhausted, that everything was fine…

Reko had all the makings of a seer, from her plain white coat to her darker antlers, but she had neither the dextrous paws nor the strong jaws required to crack open clamshells, so she had taken up the role of a warrior in defiance. She’d fought off many bearyenas in her time, and once a rumour had gone around that she had even taken a swipe at a bluebird and taken a few feathers as trophies. _Should have taken one with you,_ Kois thought, as she touched her nose to her fallen tribemate’s.

The cub let out another squeak, trying to push closer to Reko’s body and what warmth was left. Kois supposed she had little choice, and bent down to lift him out of the nest. She would find someone else to leave him with, someone who had a better idea what to do than her.

She stopped.

The cub was plain white, and that was not unusual in a tribe so full of seers of the sea, but his coat was not their creamy near-white but shone like snow, and where Reko’s nose and claws were black, his were pale pink. His eyes were still closed, but Kois had no doubt they would be the same. She looked up at the sky, but there were only wispy clouds above, and a warm sun that shone down on a scene that belonged far away from here. For whilst the seers had their own stories of the sea and how its visions came to them long ago, so Kois’ ancestors, the nichelings of the mountains,  told their stories of Yuki of the snows.

It was a warm, sunny day, and Kois imagined that she would not see many of those any more.

Gently she lifted the tiny creature from the nest, brushed the tip of her heavy tail against Reko’s body, and headed downhill to the sea.

A tribe may be close knit or full of drifters, strict or relaxed. It all depended on the land. The meadows of Kois’ home tribe were peaceful enough that there was rarely any need for a leader to emerge. Apart from the seers, the inhabitants were free to gather their own food and spread out as they pleased. The seers did not share Kois’ stories, but they were the closest to a leader that Kois had ever known in her life, so it was to them that she headed.

The sound of breaking waves grew louder as she climbed down the hillside, keeping a gentle but firm hold on the cub’s scruff. A salt-scented breeze made lazy waves in the tall grass.

The shoreline was known to the tribe as Sunrise Cove, and it was the preserve of the seers. Kois could see a few of them scattered around the sand in the distance, combing the debris washed ashore or digging for clams in the shallows. From this far away, they looked as small as the cub in her jaws. He was quiet now, and she hoped it was just because he knew not to make a sound whilst being carried. Was that what cubs did? She kept her attention on the path instead. Sunrise Cove was a secluded bay surrounded by steep cliffs marked with sea caves, the extend of which only the seers knew for certain. The few paths that led to the sheltered sands were steep and rocky. Kois splayed her claws to stay steady as she descended. The winds that constantly rustled the grassy hills died away, the sound of surf growing louder, yet peaceful and calm in the suddenly still air. A few of the seers paused to watch her approach. Kois tried to see if Laana was amongst them, wondering what she would say to her friend. Did they already know what had happened? Did Laana?

But instead she spotted Silais at the far end of the beach, where the rockpools lay by the cliff base. She would know what to do, and when she looked up at Kois’ approach, Kois thought that whatever she had found in the pools had already told her what was happening.

Silais was a powerfully built nicheling, who moved slowly on large claws. They were still barely half the size of Kois’ own paws, but big enough to fend off a bearyena with ease. Though she lacked the dextrous paws that most seers used to open shells, her jaw was as heavy and strong as Kois’, enough to make short work of any clam. Her antlers were large, their colour dulled with age, but still draped with translucent seaweed and even a few shells and pearls that she had found and earned throughout her life. She walked over the sands to greet Kois, crossing a field of fallen boulders from the cliffs above, now worn smooth by waves and wind, and coated with seaweed. “I see you have not brought a rabbil for me to eat.”

Kois deposited the cub on the warm sand. “No.”

“He has no horn buds.” Silais sniffed at him. “And he does not seem as if he will grow to open shells. If he is not a seer, what is he?” She settled into a sitting position, her flat tail sweeping the sand aside.

Kois took a deep breath. “He is Yuki.”

The old seer tilted her head. Kois had not known how she would take the news, and had been preparing how to explain the snow touched child and his significance. But it seemed that Silais had some inkling of the mountain tales, for she looked away from the tiny cub and into Kois’ eyes, and said “And for this child, we must find the mountains?”

“If he can lead us there.”

“Kois, the tribe has lived here for more generations than I can count – your own lineage aside. It is safe here, and there is plenty of food. How many of them will want to leave to chase ramfoxes in a blizzard?”

“It was not my intention to force anyone to leave, seer.” Kois looked down at her claws. The cub – Yuki, for there was no question of calling him anything else now – tried to paw his way through the loose sand to find her again. She reached out a paw, feeling his soft fur as he nuzzled against it. “I would be willing to leave. Anyone else would be free to choose.”

“I should hope they know what they are choosing, then. There are worse things than ramfoxes in the snow.”

“I know.” Kois twitched the tip of her clubbed tail as gently as she could, which still made a quiet thud in the sand.

Silais’ yellow eyes narrowed. “Leaving all this aside, where is he from? I doubt you are his mother, the sea would have something to say about that.”

“He is Reko’s son.” Kois stroked a claw over Yuki’s back. “She is dead.”

“Reko… I see. And his father?”

“Reko only knows now. She always did as she wanted.”

Silais let out a snort of what might have been laughter. “That much is true. I suppose he will have to stay with us; we would be able to care for him.”

Kois sighed in relief and nudged Yuki with her broad muzzle. “Thank you, seer.”

“Of course, it will be up to him to decide if he will lead anyone away,” said Silais, “and I for one have no intention of leaving this shore. You understand that not everyone else will be as happy as you to leave, too.”

“I had already considered that.”

Silais bent down to pick up Yuki, but before she could, Kois went on. “One more thing. Where is Laana?”

“She will be around the cove somewhere. You will find her.”

“Thankyou.” Kois watched in silence as Silais lifted Yuki by the scruff and turned to leave. She kept watching until they vanished out of sight, waiting for the time when she would have to break the news to her friend, and wishing she never had to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuki is a recurring character from Seri's Niche playthroughs, hence the unusual name.


	3. A Blessing of Bones

Laana touched her nose to Reko’s. She was still curled up in the nest as she had been when Kois had found her. Kois, looking on, felt that if she ignored the way Reko did not respond, she could pretend nothing had happened.

She hadn’t told Laana about Yuki yet. It was enough that the young seer should have to learn about the loss of her sister.

Kois had found her at the beach shortly after parting ways with Silais, just as the old seer had said she would. She had been combing through the seaweed and debris left behind by last night’s high tide. Kois wondered if she already knew, if the sea had already told her what happened. Laana had little to say when Kois told her. Kois was not a nicheling of graceful words, and Laana had done nothing but stare as she listened to the news.

Now it was high sun on another beautiful day, and Laana was face to face with her dead sister, and under the warm sun and pleasant breeze, Kois could only watch as her friend’s world fell apart.

Laana nudged her sister, nuzzling up against her cheek. The corpse was stiff and moved as a whole, pushed from the nest by Laana’s motions. She nudged it again, harder, not looking up at Kois, as if she was not there, and sat on her haunches. Staring down at her sister’s remains, nearly as motionless herself, only the frantic rise and fall of her chest gave anything away.

“This?” She kept her eyes on the nest, as if she were talking not to Kois but to empty air, giving word to her thoughts. “This is what did it? After the bearyena and the bluebirds, this?”

Laana had been her mother’s last cub, and Kois knew that she had left her with little more than a few hazy memories and a desire that she become the family’s next seer. It had been Reko that the young Laana had always been trailing after. Kois curled her tail around her legs, remembering a day like this one, not so long ago. Laana twined her claws through the nest, making crisp sounds as the woven dry grass broke under her touch.

“Doeli,” she said, speaking the name of the first seer, the ancient ancestor of her line. Her ears were flat against her head, her blue irises almost obscured by wide pupils. “Doeli return me to the sea, for… no. No, it is no use. She was never a seer. I can’t do it. I can’t give her back to the sea.”

“I know.” Reko had never been a seer, and never wanted to be. Letting the sea’s currents carry her away into the deep, as the seers did, would not be right.

“What do you do?” Now Laana was looking up at Kois again, her eyes filled with a pleading expression.

Kois understood. “We would let her bones go back to the nest,” she said. “We can bury her, if you think that would be right.”

Even if neither Laana or Reko had Kois’ blood, that seemed to brighten the seer up a little, enough that her ears perked up and she sat up straighter, rubbing at her antlers with her one nimble paw. “Yes,” she said. “We should do that.”

If she wanted to keep her mind from everything by making herself busy, Laana didn’t say. Kois could not bring herself to mind. Neither of them were good diggers like the nichelings born with broad paws like a stagmole’s, but Kois’ claws were big enough to tear up the ground enough for this, and the dirt was soft enough to dig after last night’s rain. It was easier than the last time she had to do this. The day wore on as they kept digging, and soon their pelts were caked in dirt. Even Laana, who was normally so meticulous about keeping her coat clean, didn’t bother about it. They worked in silence, until they were close to done, when Laana looked up from pushing dirt aside and said: “What happened to it?”

She should have said something earlier, Kois thought, but what was there to say, when so much had happened to Laana already? “He is alive. Silais has him.”

“I didn’t think that Reko would want her child to be a seer.” Laana brushed a little dirt from her body.

“He isn’t. He is Yuki.”

Laana had some understanding of the snow god’s story, so it did not take long for Kois to recount the tale of how she had recognised Yuki and brought him to Silais in the hope she would understand. Laana listened quietly, as if she had been shaken so many times today that nothing else could faze her. She sat still, with her paws neatly tucked together and her tail curled around her feet. Only when Kois was finished did she speak. “Then we have to go.”

“Silias didn’t want anyone to go who didn’t want to.”

“I have nothing to stay here for.”

“Nevertheless, the choice is his.”

“I know.” Laana crouched, peering into the hole. “Is it ready?”

The hole was deep and long enough to bury a nicheling of Reko’s size by now, and Kois supposed that she could put things off no longer. The sun was already well into its downward path toward the horizon – soon it would be evening, and time to retire for the night. “Yes. Is there anything you want to do?”

“No.” Laana pawed at the remnants of seaweed draped from her antlers. “I suppose I have done all I need.” She padded over to Reko’s body and sat down.

It took the two of them to lift Reko and nudge her into the hole. Kois tried to gently lower her, but her body was stiff and it was a difficult process, and she ended up dropping her and sending her crashing into the bottom, causing Kois and Laana to flinch back, ears flattened. Laana blurted out a string of apologies, and Kois reassured her that no harm had been done. They both took turns in pushing the dirt back into the hole, until Reko was gone and only a patch of churned earth remained to tell of what had happened.

Finally, as the sun approached the horizon and the light grew warm and red, Kois laid a scrap of dry nest grass over the spot, and sat back.

“I suppose I had better leave now.” Laana looked worn out from the day’s work, as if the enormity of everything was an invisible weight borne by her overworked body.

“Would you like me to come with you?” As peaceful as the island was, bearyenas preferred to roam at night.

Laana fell silent, contemplating Kois’s offer. She looked up at the darkening sky, her gaze distant and unfocused. “No. no, I will be safe tonight.”

Kois could not press the matter, so she got to her feet. “Then I will see you.”

“Yes.”

It seemed that Laana was a nicheling of even fewer words than Kois tonight. She walked away without another word, vanishing into the tall grass in the direction of the shore. Kois was left alone to listen to the wind in the grass and the chirp of insects. With nothing more to do, she loped away into the dusk-tinted fields, and left Reko to the earth.

 

Kois stopped at her favourite tree, where everything began, and cracked open a few more nuts. The hard day’s work had left her with an appetite, not to mention plenty of dirt in her coat to wash away in the stream. She didn’t mind the cold anymore.

It was dark by the time she returned to her home nest. Kois’ eyes were better in the dark than many of her tribemate’s, but she took care stepping through the grass and into the den that had been home for all of her life. Few other nichelings cared for it, although it was tucked under another ridged that kept away the wind. Kois knew the reason for this, but she did not care.

The twin skulls of her mother and father were the only bright points in the dark, as moonlight reflected from their curves. They had blessed the nest with their bones long ago, just like the old Yukirs their traced their lineage back to, and just as Reko had done today. Soon the earth would do its work and leave her bones bare, so they too could return to her nest. It was an old thing, a little of tradition and a little magic, if you believed in such things. I lived her, it said, and I will die here, and I will return to the land that gave me life.

“I’m back.” Kois curled up, forming a tight ball with her clubbed tail wrapped around her body. The nest smelled of old, dry grass, a smell of warm summer days when the blades became dry and crunchy underfoot. The skulls watched, or at least to Kois, they seemed to watch. One was thickset and heavy, like Kois herself, the other narrow, ridged, and set with sharper teeth than most. She knew they could never answer, but it had become a personal tradition to speak with the skulls whenever something troubled her. She had often wondered if the old Yukirs did the same.

“Yuki came back, too.”

It was a still night. There should have been a breeze rustling the grass, as if in reply, but there was not.

“I wonder what you would have thought of that. He’s Reko’s son, did you know? Maybe you do, now. Old Silais has him now. She doesn’t want to leave. I cannot say I would blame her. Who would want to leave a place like this? But I know I’ll be going. I’ll miss you. She flexed the tip of her clubbed tail, and took a deep breath. “But I suppose you were always more _there_ than _here._ ”

The stars rose and turned a little more overhead, as Kois pondered her next words.

“I think Laana will go, too. I hope she does.”

 

The trail down to Sunrise Cove was deserted as dusk fell. The sands below were empty, with no sign of the seers who combed the shoreline for omens when the sun shone. Laana kept her ears perked for the sound of bearyenas, but true to her instincts, there was no sign of the giant predators tonight.

The sand below the tideline was coated in a silver sheen of moonlight. Laana’s paws made crisp little footprints as she walked toward the sea. Waves crashed before her, forever and unchanging. They should be different, now. The world could not go on as it always had, not after today. Yet it did just that.

She washed herself in the cold water, sluicing down the dirt from her pelt and letting the sea carry it away.

Down the shore, the tide was low and the sea caves easy to reach. She scrambled across the fallen boulders and little rock pools that led toward the seer’s cave. At high tide that meant wading through shallows, but at low tide she could walk inside with ease. The gaping mouth beckoned to her, calling her back to the place she had called home nearly all her life. In the dark it was an outline, a shade deeper than the cliffs surrounding it, tall and narrow. She walked into the dark, feeling soft, damp sand beneath her paws again. The sounds of the sea became muffled and dampened between the stone.

There was no light here apart from the faintest hints of the moon and stars and the last remnants of the sun, but Laana could find her way from feel and memory. The cave angled upwards, damp sand giving way to dry stone. It was here that the seers bound their nests, away from danger and close to the sea that  brought them its messages. Up ahead she could smell other nichelings, the familiar scent of tribemates and fellow seers, mixed in with salt and seaweed. Her ears perked at the sound of voices. The faint sounds resolved themselves into words, enough for her to tell that someone was telling a story.

She stopped to listen to what she recognised as an old tale about Tata the trickster and the bluebird king. The seers would all be sitting together, listening to the story unfold and letting the darkness give form to their imaginations. They would talk together of the day’s omens, and eat the clam meat they had gathered. The world had changed, and yet it stayed the same.

Silais would be there in her usual hollow, and  _he_ would be with her.

Laana felt a knot inside her stomach. She waited, listening to the story go on the teller spoke of how Tata tricked the bluebird king into carrying him off so that he could reach his domain in the clouds. It was one that she had heard many times before. The seers had told it to her when she was young.

She turned away from the hidden gathering and back to the cave mouth, where the night sky was a vertical slash filled with stars, set in the dark rock walls. The sound of waves grew louder, and cold night air ruffled through her fur as she stepped outside. Picking her way through the boulder field, she didn’t think of where she was going, nor did she even know. Wherever she went, she couldn’t go back in there. At least, not tonight.


	4. Clams and Bearyenas

Calm settled upon the cave as rays of early morning sun shone down its length and bathed the sleepers in golden light. A few of them stirred, ears twitching and tails flicking, but they remained asleep, not willing to leave their nests just yet.

Yuki stretched as he got to his feet, hopping down the cave slopes, sniffing the salty air. Silais was still asleep, and nobody else looked like they were going to get up either. They always complained it was too early when he tried to wake them, and he’d already learnt that tugging on ears didn’t change anyone’s mind.

Bounding around the sleeping seers, he realised that he couldn’t see Laana. His aunt was usually more willing to rise early than the others, but today she had beaten him to it! Her scent was still around the cave, strong in her nest, so she couldn’t have been gone long. Yuki looked back at the sun, framed in the cave mouth. Silais didn’t like him leaving the cave at high tide, even though he was sure he could swim the distance, but right now the sea was out, and Silais had never said anything about that.

None of the seers stirred as he trotted down the cave’s slope to the sandy entrance. Even at low tide the sand was damp, and if you tried to dig, the hole would fill with water as if it was all underground, but it would still take your weight if you kept moving.

Yuki squinted as he stepped out into the sun. Laana had told him his eyes weren’t very good, something to do with his colour, although how would he know it if he couldn’t see things any different to how he could? But he knew he had trouble for a while when he went out into bright places, so he tried to give himself some time to adjust. Even so, he couldn’t resist hopping over the boulder fields, scrambling up and down the seaweed strewn rocks. He liked how climbing them made it easier to see the beach. It wasn’t as good as being on the cliff, where it felt like you could see the whole world, but it was nearly as good.

There were rarely any other nichelings on the beach this early, so all Yuki could see at first was a flat expanse of gold sand. A dark line of seaweed marked the high tide point. Yuki loved to explore the debris along the tide line, even if he didn’t know how to interpret the messages the seers could find in them (Silais said you needed antlers to do that, and he supposed that was why she had all those shells and pearls hanging from hers). He could still dig up shells and pebbles, and take his favourites back to the cave. Sometimes one of the seers would let him watch as they broke open a clam, and tell him what it meant.

He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to see better. There was a faint white shape, visible now he was more used to the bright sunlight, moving along the high tide line. Yuki’s vision at that distance was too blurry to see who it was, but he jumped from the boulder anyway and tore off the beach to meet them.

It was Laana! She had seen him too, and with a cry of “Yuki!” she ran toward him. Yuki tried to run even faster to reach her, but then he realised she didn’t sound so happy to see him, and slowed down. “Yuki!” she shouted again. “What _are_ you doing?” She nearly collided with him, drawing him close with her more dextrous paw, and looking up at the sky whilst ignoring his struggles to break free.

“I’m looking for you!”

“Out in the open?” She pulled away, just enough to give him a shocked look. “There might have been a bluebird!”

“Oh.” He was about to say that he’d looked and there weren’t any, but it was not as if he actually had. He looked up anyway. “But I can’t see any.”

“That… that doesn’t matter.” Laana stepped back and touched her paw to the single gem set in Yuki’s chest. It was pink, just like his eyes. “I’m glad you like to see me, but please, don’t go out into the open again!”

“I won’t.” Yuki curled his tail around his paws. “Can I stay with you, then?”

“I suppose there is no getting you back to the cave now.” Laana stood up and flicked her tail. “Very well, then.”

“What are we going to do?” Yuki ran forward, then stopped when he remembered Laana’s warning, ears lowered in apology as he waited for her to catch up to him. “Are we going to dig up clams? Can we find Kois? Why did you come out so early?”

“I think Kois would appreciate it if we let her sleep a little longer,” said Laana. “And I like it out here, where it is quiet. I was looking for clams.”

“I’ll help you!” Yuki started sniffing at the sand, but all he could smell was salt. Undeterred, he started to dig. Just like in the cave, the hole filled with water as fast as he could scoop out the sand.

“I’m sure we can find one if we look hard enough,” said Laana. “Why don’t you come with me down the beach?”

They eventually came across a clam in the damp sand, as they walked together toward the far end of the beach. Yuki watched in fascination as his aunt worked to open its shell. Her paws were different – his were both small and round and good for running, and she had a paw like that too, but the other, her left, had longer, thinner digits that she used to work open the shell by levering it open.

“Will it have a pearl?” he asked.

Laana’s ears perked in amusement. “Yuki, pearls are very rare. I’ve never found one, and Silais found two over her entire life.”

“Well, maybe this one will have one!”

There was no pearl, but there was plenty of meat inside. Yuki sniffed at it, suddenly aware that his stomach was empty. “What does it mean?”

Laana looked up, out to sea. A few fluffy white clouds were making their way across the sky’s zenith, on a backdrop of clear blue. “It seems,” she said, “there will be plenty of berries soon, for those willing to go looking.”

Yuki flopped down onto the sand, pawing at the shell’s edge. “Does the sea always talk about berries?”

“Yuki, berries are very important! And that means a lot of other things too. If there will be lots of berries, that means it is likely to rain soon, too, so they can grow. And they mean more rabbils to hunt, because they eat the berries too. There are many things that can come from one.”

Yuki still didn’t see how berries could be all that interesting, but if Laana was right, then maybe that could lead to all sorts of things. Maybe they could chase a rabbil (he wasn’t big enough to fight them yet, but he liked to practice pouncing) and it would lead him to a secret cave nobody had ever seen before! Or maybe…

He dislodged a half buried pebble from the sand, sitting up to get a better look at what he was doing. “Do they ever say anything about me?”

Yuki knew that his white coat and pink eyes made him something different to the rest of the tribe. Laana said that his fur was like snow, even though Yuki had never seen snow, and couldn’t imagine what it was like. Laana said it laid on the ground like sand, but it fell from the sky like rain. That all sounded like a funny story, and Laana had also admitted that nobody in the tribe, not even Silais, had ever seen snow, so he might have thought no more of it were it not for the reality of who he was. When he grew up he was going to lead the tribe to a land full of snow, because he had lived before, long ago, and done the same in that time of old stories. Silais said so too, and so did Kois, who knew more about snow than anyone, so it must be real.

Laana looked taken aback by his question, and he was about to apologise when she spoke. “I don’t know if I can say. You know that Silais always said that would be for you to decide. Perhaps it is not for the sea to decide, either. What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

He’d grown up with the stories, but he still liked to play in the rockpools and help Laana find clams, or go looking for secret caves behind the cliffs. Yuki was what he was supposed to but, but he wasn’t there, not yet. But to a cub it was all a long way off anyway, something he would do when he came into all three of his gems and then, he would know exactly where to go and what to do.

And he didn’t know what words to use for that, so he said “Can we find Kois?” Kois knew all about who he was supposed to be, and she was strong, and brave, and not afraid of anything. And she didn’t talk a lot, but when she did, she was full of stories of who he was.

“Well...” Laana looked at the sky, and Yuki knew that meant she was checking the sun’s position as she thought things over. “I suppose it can’t hurt to go looking. But you still need to eat something first.” She pushed the clam toward him with her left paw.

There was enough clam meat along the shore that Yuki found it rather boring after a while, but Laana was right – it had been a long time since he’d eaten, and his stomach felt tight and empty. They shared the clam – it was chewy, and tasted like the sea smelled - before heading up the rocky path that separated Sunrise Cove from the mainland.

Yuki wondered if this was what climbing a mountain must be like, rising higher and higher, weaving past boulders and tufts of grass, amongst low trees bent into unnatural angles by constant wind. It didn’t feel right – too much earth and salt, not enough ice. But it felt a little like his imagination told him it should.

Kois’ favourite tree, the big one that gave nuts, was not like the stunted windblown things that grew atop the cliff. To reach it you had to cross a gentle meadow full of soft grass, listening out for the cold and clear trickle of the stream that curved by its roots. Kois said it was a place to sit and think, and although Yuki didn’t know why that was more interesting than chasing rabbils or hiding in the grass to pounce on your friends, she was often found there.

“Kooo-is!” Yuki bounded forward, though the grass and into the earthy space under the boughs. But Kois was not there. He sniffed at the air as Laana followed. It smelled like Kois had been there recently, but she was gone now. “Hey! Are you hiding?” He pawed at one of the nuts that had fallen, trying to push it over, but it was nearly as big as his head and too heavy for him to move. Kois could crack their shells open just by biting them, and Laana could pry them open like a clamshell, but Yuki had never been able to get to the food inside. It didn’t stop him from trying, though, distracting himself briefly from Kois’ absence by gnawing at the shell in the hopes it would open.

“We must have missed her,” said Laana.

Yuki broke away from trying to bite open the nutshell. “But can we still find her?”

“Yes, of course.” Laana sniffed at the air, catching Kois’ scent just as Yuki had. “I think she- Yuki. Stay still. Be quiet.”

Laana’s voice was suddenly low and calm in that way that meant that something was wrong, and she drew closer to him, her body pressing against his, her breathing shallow. Yuki looked up, a stab of fear running through his chest – but it couldn’t be a bluebird, it wouldn’t reach him with Laana by his side and the thick, twisted branches overhead. He narrowed his eyes. The light was easier on him than the open shore, filtered through canopy and grass alike, taking on an old and dappled hue, yet still everything was blurred to him unless it was a step or two away.

He heard it first, a threatening growl, a footstep in the grass, enough to alert Laana and make her fling herself in front of him, head bowed, sharp antlers pointed at bared teeth hidden in the grass. “Yuki, run!” But his feet would not let him, he was trapped where he stood, and the bearyena was in the shadows, ready to pounce now that his eyes had found it hidden in the grass…

The bearyena lunged, and Yuki squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the claws… but all he felt was a thump, as though something had fallen to the ground before him, and he opened his eyes again. “Kois!” She was standing in front of them, tail lashing, claws digging into the earth, head lowered as she glared at the bearyena. Her ear flicked at Yuki’s call, but she did not turn away.

Yuki jumped at the touch of a paw on his back, but it was only Laana, urging him to safety. The bearyena stood with one paw raised, pondering its next move, but Kois stood her ground. She was smaller, but not by much – if it came to a fight, it might be the bearyena coming out worse. She swung her tail, showing off the clubbed tip, and growled.

“Leave,” she said.

Kois and the bearyena stood in their stalemate, staring one another down. Yuki tried to look away, but found himself unable to. He had never seen a bearyena this close before. Now its dark, hunched form was so close he could touch it with just a few more steps. It smelled like the earth after rain, and he could hear its rough, heavy breathing as it sized Kois up.

For a moment it seemed that either one would lunge at the other at a moment’s notice. Kois swung her tail again, and Yuki closed his eyes, but all she did was slam the club into the ground with such a force that he felt it all through his body, a sound that shook the world. “Leave _now._ ” Kois’ voice was slow and level, with the assurance that the next blow would not be to the ground.

The bearyena growled, a low rumble that likewise reverberated through the earth… and turned to leave. Its massive frame vanished into the grasses, becoming no more than a distant rustle. Kois didn’t look away, but Yuki found his feet again, and bounded over to her. “You’re amazing!”

Kois snapped out of her quiet fury, looking down as Yuki pawed at her side for attention. Immediately her expression softened, though her face always looked stern with her thickset jaw, heavy horns, and swept back ears. Yuki always knew the difference, so he didn’t mind. “Yuki!” she said. “I’m sorry you had to be there. It won’t come back.”

“Why didn’t you run?” That was Laana, coming up behind them. Yuki looked back over his shoulder, ears drooped as he remembered her earlier admonishment about the bluebirds.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and shivered as the rush from the attack left his body. “I couldn’t move, I tried.” He closed his eyes and remembered the way his legs wouldn’t carry him as he could do nothing but stare. Why couldn’t he run? But then he thought of Kois, diving in, and his ears perked again. “But Kois saved us!”

“You should still be careful,” said Kois.

Yuki pried a pebble loose from the ground and began batting it about. “Do you think I could fight bearyenas?”

“Just like your mother,” said Laana.

The pebble bounced off, unseen, into the grass. Yuki turned around. Laana was sitting still and gazing upward again, her ears low and her voice wistful.

“If she fought bearyenas, I could do it!” said Yuki.

“That will be a long way away, and a lot of hard practice,” said Kois.

“But could I do it? I could be strong, like you,” Yuki swatted at a clump of grass - “and smart like you!” He looked back at Laana. “You could teach me!”

“Perhaps,” said Laana. “But… you need to keep yourself safe.” She touched her paw to his gem again. “You can do that, can’t you? I...”

“Yuki, would you like to come and chase some rabbils in the meadow?” Kois bent over, so that her face was closer to Yuki’s. Her massive bulk shaded the light.

“Yes!” Yuki said.

Laana turned away, looking back out at the open meadows, away from the nut tree’s shade. A gentle wind blew, rippling the tall grass like waves upon the sea and giving rise to a gentle whisper as the blades rustled in its wake. “Yes, you have fun doing that, won’t you? Don’t go getting yourself into trouble.”

“He won’t,” said Kois.

Laana turned tail, quick and fluid, and vanished into the ever shifting grasses. Yuki could see them part as she passed through, and he sat and watched for a while, as the trail grew distant, until it dwindled away and his blurry eyesight lost track of her. Kois did the same, sat still as a boulder, and what she was thinking, Yuki couldn’t say.

Eventually he spoke. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“Yes,” said Kois. “Eventually.”

Yuki’s tail curled around his paws. The idea of grief was one that he had carried with him throughout his short life. How could it not, with his mother gone before he could know her, and his first gem earned in the company of the seers? But Reko was no more than stories to him. Laana loved to talk about her and tell him how she had become a warrior when the seers would not take her, how she had fended off bearyenas twice her size to defend the tribe. And no matter how many times he heard the stories and imagined his mother’s exploits, they remained just that. There was no room in his mind to understand, yet, how Laana really felt, only an understanding that she hurt and, once again, that he would not see her for the rest of the day.

“Really?” he said. If anyone did understand and know, it was Kois.

“It will take time, but yes.” Kois bent down, so that her massive, horned head was close to his, and gave him a nudge with her snout. Even a gentle touch was nearly enough to knock Yuki over, but he knew that, and would dig his claws into the ground so she could safely touch him. He nuzzled her back, feeling velvety soft fur over a sturdy frame.

“What about the bearyena?”

“It won’t hurt her. They don’t like me, but they do listen to me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think I ought to be telling you that just yet.”

“Is it because you’re really strong and they don’t want to mess with you?”

“Yes.”

That was enough to satisfy Yuki. Laana would come back, and some other day she would be sad again, but she would always come back. And one day, he would be Yuki proper, and lead her to the snows, and maybe then she could be happy all the time. But that was a long way off, and in his young mind, the future stretched on and on across the gentle rolling meadows of home, full of berries to gather and rabbils to hunt. So he stepped out with Kois into the sea of grass, listening for tiny paws scurrying through the blades, and let that future happen.


	5. The Sign of the Snows

Yuki awoke the next morning from muddled dreams of chasing rabbils over snow, except that he had no idea what snow looked or felt like, so it was like white sand under his paws and not cold at all. His first thought was that it was rather quiet for once, eerily so, for even when everyone was asleep he could hear gentle breathing or the sound of dreamers turning over in their nests. He felt something nudge his sides, and woke properly, opening his eyes to find old Silais pushing him awake with a gentle shove of her broad muzzle.

There was, just as he thought, nobody else there. Yuki’s surprise turned to understanding as he turned an ear and listened to the faint sounds of water lapping against cave walls, and realised he had slept through low tide. It _had_ been a long day yesterday – he felt that he and Kois must have combed the whole island on their adventures after berries and rabbils. The sun had nearly set by the time she accompanied him to the cave. Even without the bearyena, it had been a tiring day. He let out a long yawn and stretched, one leg at a time, though it was hard to leave that nice warm nest with its rabbil fur lining and sweet smelling roots tucked into its weave.

“Yuki,” Silais said, “I need to show you something very important. Can you come with me?”

He froze up for a second, fearing something terrible had happened – was Laana hurt? Had she not come back last night? It had been so late he’d forgotten to see if she was there – it was too dark, and he was too tired to do any more than sniff his way to the nest and fall asleep. But Silais must have seen his flattened ears and fluffed tail that gave away the stab of fear inside, for she continued: “No, it is not trouble. But it is something you need to see.”

That cheered him up instantly, and in his mind he went over all the things it could be – what if someone had found a pearl, or something even rarer and more special than that? He wanted to ask Silais what it was or if any of his guesses were right, but the old seer was in no position to answer any of his questions, being that she had to lift him by his scruff to carry him over the tide-flooded cave entrance. Normally he’d have protested being carried about like a baby with no gems, but the excitement was all too much for him to care. He did wonder if he could swim the distance; it was shallow enough that the water came up to Silais’ gems, but he knew she’d never let him. She held him high to keep him out of the water, and he curled his fluffy tail up to keep it dry. Even if he did want to try swimming, it did look all cold and murky down there.

Presently they emerged onto the boulder fields outside, and as usual it look a little longer for Yuki’s eyes to adjust to the daylight than anyone else’s, so he didn’t protest _too_ much at Silais continuing to carry him as she picked out the driest, least slippery and seaweed caked path to the sands. When she did let him go and take his steps onto soft, dry sand above the high tide mark, he could already see what she had been heading for.

They looked like nothing more than a collection of white blurs to Yuki’s eyes, but he was used to that, and he could still tell that all the seers must be there, more than he could count, gathered around by the water to see something he couldn’t, for their backs were all turned toward him. Silais walked slowly, and though Yuki longed to scamper ahead (surely the bluebird would not strike with so many of them here?) he kept her pace. A sense descended upon him that this was something bigger than he had dared hope for, something big and exciting but also better fitted for the world of adults who had all their gems. He suddenly felt very small, even when some of the seers turned to watch their approach and parted to let he and Silais through, and he caught the sound of nervous chatter between them, yet too faint to understand what any of them were saying. None of them had ever looked at him the way they did now. Even knowing who he was, he had always been just a cub to them. Now they stood back, ears slightly lowered, tails nervously folded around legs, and even though a part of him had waited for this moment since he was old enough to understand, he was not sure that he liked it.

The one seer who did not move still had her back to him, but he needed no more to recognise Laana. She was bent over something he could not see, but it was plain to him that it must be a clam. He broke free of the grip on his mind and body, running forward to meet her, and she looked over her shoulder with a shocked “Yuki!” that sounded so normal, as if today was any other day, that he ran to her and met her surprise with a quick nuzzle, heedless of everyone watching. But his attention was swiftly brought back to the present when he saw that she was, as he had guessed, looking at a clam, and though the meat inside meant nothing to him apart from a nice breakfast, his audience and Laana’s solemn gaze told him all he needed to know.

“Yuki...” Laana sounded dazed, and her voice was a whisper. “It is the sign of the snows.”

He looked up. Red eyes met blue. “Now?”

A part of him had known this must be what Laana had seen even before he left the cave, for he had been brought up to know that this day would come, and nothing else could explain why the seers had all gathered or why they glanced at one another as he walked past. But he had still thought that this day would come in some distant, nebulous future where he was big and grown, not in the long days of chasing rabbils through the meadow under a warm sun. Gripped by the possibility that he _had_ grown in the night, he looked down at his chest, squinting to see if maybe a second gem had appeared, but though it shone bright and pink with vitality, there was still only one, as there always had been as long as he could remember.

“Oh, Yuki,” his aunt said, snapping him out of speculation, “isn’t it so exciting?”

“Yes,” he said, because that seemed like the right answer, and he looked back over the crowd. It occurred to him that Kois should know about this, but there was no sign of her earth-red coat, only the seers and their plain white pelts. “Where’s Kois?” She knew all the stories of Yuki, she would know what to do…

“That is enough staring.” Silais’ voice broke through the crowd, and she stepped between Yuki and Laana on one side and the other seers on the other, claws flexing in the sand, an unspoken sign to give them some space. “There are plenty of other clams to find, even when the tide is high.”

The others seemed to understand, and alone or in twos and threes they broke off from the crowd, though they still talked amongst one another in those low voices that Yuki knew meant they didn’t want him to hear. But soon they were all gone. Silais sat down beside him, and bent down to his level. “Are you well?” she said.

“Yes?” he said, aware that was all he seemed able to say at the moment. He wanted to say he wasn’t sure, that he didn’t want to go just now, that he was going to miss the meadows and the cove and Kois’ tree… but Kois would be so happy, so that would make him happy too, and Laana had found the clam, and that was important, and… “It’s important!”

“Hmmm,” said Silais. Then, to Laana, “I will tell you what I told Kois. What you choose is up to you, but this tribe has lived for many generations upon this island. It may not be easy finding those who are willing to leave, and certainly not for the snow.”

“I know what I saw, Silais. You can see it too!”

“I can, and I have.” Silais sniffed at the open clam. “The sign is unmistakable, a new journey, to perilous lands. Unmistakable. The question is of who will be willing to follow you.” She stood up and licked a stray tuft of fur on her shoulder, smoothing it down. “I suggest you spread the word as fast as you can. The last thing we want is rumour.”

  


Yuki knew they couldn’t tell anyone without telling Kois first of all, so she was their first destination. Silais had seen fit to remind them of all the dangerous beasts of the mountains – arctic ramfoxes, balance bears, even walrus deer would turn and fight when threatened. But Yuki wasn’t afraid of those. They would have Kois with them, and there was nobody stronger in all the tribe, maybe not even in the whole world, so nothing could hurt them as long as she was by their side.

No, what felt strange was seeing the meadow, feeling warm sunlight on his back and the tall grass brushing at his sides as he parted it to walk through, and knowing that soon he would never see or feel them again. He and Laana stopped to eat some berries, for in the chaos of the morning they had not eaten at all that day. They were a little dry from all the hot sunshine, but Yuki liked that, because they made the flavour sweeter and sharper. He wondered if mountain berries tasted the same, or if this was something else he would soon leave behind, and he wasn’t sure they tasted so good after that.

But then they found Kois, and when she heard the news she and Laana purred and nuzzled one another like a mated pair. And Yuki knew that she had been waiting for a day like this for many seasons, longer than he had been alive, and the sight of them together made him forget all his fears. He rushed up to them to tell Kois how excited he was too, and she responded with a friendly nudge, her broad snout touching the tuft on top of his head that would one day be a proper mane.

“So am I,” she said, and though her voice was gentle and calm as it always was, he knew it must be true.

In time the news spread across the island whether they meant it or not, passed from one nicheling to the next, working its way through berry bushes, over streams and meadows, and lingering in the shade of the nut trees. Yuki could not help but be aware of how everyone turned to look as they passed by. His brilliant white coat had always made him stand out, but now, just as it had with the seers, everything had changed. Nichelings would look up from their berry picking and nest weaving duties, and stop him and his guardians to ask if the rumours were true.

And true to Silais’ warning, few seemed as if they wanted to leave. “I think I am too old, island hopping is for the young!” one said. Or, “I have cubs… I could never leave now, or think of them leaving.” And, “I’ve lived here all my life, and it sounds cold out there!” But those words could not slow Yuki down. Even seeing the familiar meadows and all the older nichelings he knew by name and greeted whenever he saw them, his mind swam with the reminder that he was indeed Yuki of the snowy mountains, and this was his day.

Nor could they stop Kois. Some of the words she heard were… she would not call them _unkind,_ for she herself was not unkind, but they did not know the way of the old Yukirs. So she would choose to believe they meant no cruelty by wondering out loud why anyone would choose to live around that “nasty cold ground” they’d heard stories about. They were only doing as they always did, speaking of what they understood and what they didn’t.

Throughout the day they travelled, and though Yuki exclaimed that they must have wandered from one end of the island to another, they stayed on their paws until nightfall. Yuki and Laana kept a wary eye out for bearyena as they returned to Sunrise Cove and the seclusion of their sea cave. Kois parted ways high up on the meadow as the first stars began to shine in a dusky sky, and soft winds blew over the tall grass. Once again she returned to her nest and its bones.

It had not been so long ago that she had laid before them and told them of Yuki’s birth, and now she was here to tell them it was time to leave, to be led back to the snow by a child of only one gem. She settled back into the nest. The grass weave was still old and dry; summer had continued its gentle warmth, though the seers had not long ago foretold rain. Her great claws hung over the edge, her broad head resting atop them.

The skulls were still and silent. Just as Yuki before her, Kois felt struck at that moment with all the things she would leave behind. But just as Yuki, she had been raised on stories, and understood that this day may well come. And now it was here, there were few words on her tongue.

“It’s time,” she said.

And a breeze rustled the grass, and the stars continued to shine, and Kois slept in the sheltered hollow that was her nest, watched over and blessed by the bones of her mother and father.


	6. Three Goodbyes

Though none had been sighted in long memory, there were tales told of nichelings in distant lands who grew wings and took to the sky, battling even the fearsome bluebirds among the clouds. Should any of these legends have flown over Laana and Kois’ home island, they would have seen a gentle, green land, dotted with nut trees and tall grass. Flying onward, past Sunrise Cove and the wide sands they would have soared over the causeway. From above it was possible to see the way the sea lightened in colour, marking an underwater ridge that occasionally broke the waves in the form of tiny islands and sandbanks. Too small and devoid of fresh water, they were quite unlivable, but for a nicheling athletic and determined enough, they marked out a pathway to new lands. On the clearest of summer days, a watcher might catch a glimpse of such lands on the horizon – a faint smudge of purple-grey in the haze of distance, a far away land that could be anything.

There had, in the past, been two such crossings, but the second of these, the ones that Laana’s ancestors had used generations ago, had since blown away in a storm, its sand banks washed away and its little islands shattered by the waves. The last to cross, in more recent memory, had been Kois’ parents, seeking shelter. Now there was only one way to arrive or leave, and no nicheling could tell what may at the other end, only that the time had come.

Even after everything that had been said, there was no denying a certain interest toward the causeway. It had not been uncommon over the generations for a young nicheling or two to sit gazing out over the sea in speculation of the land beyond. Sometimes a whole group would come and watch and talk about how when they were grown, they would swim out and see what was on the other side, and then the seasons would pass, and they would be old, and there would be more youngsters watching the sea and talking about how they would leave soon…

But now, perhaps, a flying creature might have noticed the narrow trails through the tall grass, and the movement of nichelings as, once again, they came to look out over the sea and wonder.

Down there, on that island, there were three goodbyes.

  


Laana felt a cold wind blow from deep within the sea cave. Every day and night that wind blew in and out, regular as the tides, as if something bigger and fiercer than even a bearyena dwelt within. She had ventured into its depths once before, when she had first gone forth into the dark to receive the blessings of Doeli, first of the seers. Climb far away from the nests and the morning sun, and the light dwindled to nothing, leaving you all alone in a still and silent world, until your eyes began to see things that were not there in the dark.

But this time Laana had not come far. The depths were not of the everyday world, and though today was no ordinary morning, she hesitated in the half lit passage.

She looked back to the circle of light that was the entrance, to the nests behind her, all empty for the seers had already departed for the morning. Climbing over boulders bigger than herself, she hopped and clambered into the depths, and stopped. With her nimble paw she touched each of her gems in turn. The last time she had entered, her third and final barely emerged, they had been green, as was common in the nichelings of the meadow. When she emerged, days later, they were blue as the sea, and so they had always been since.

Laana turned back to the depths, where only traces of light remained to give shape to the passage ahead. The wind blew over her whiskers like the sea breeze on top of the cliffs, but far deeper, colder, and older. She needed a message.

So she sat where she was, and let the cave’s breath wash over her, and tried not to think of the future.

  


As Laana pondered her situation, Yuki walked alongside Silais, watching her follow the tideline for the last time. It was another bright and clear day. The wind smelled of salt, and the damp sand shone in the sunlight. Sometimes Silais would dig up a clam with her big claws, and Yuki would help, digging as fast as he could to reach it before the hole filled with sandy water. On any other day it would have been exciting, even trailing old Silais, but on a day such as this, it all felt too much like waiting. So he would look back over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes to try and see a faint white shape emerging from the cave. He would pace in circles as Silais pored over the shattered shells, although he didn’t dare go far – he could not see or hear any bluebirds, but no doubt Silais would have some words for him anyway. So he stayed close to her side, pacing, scratching imaginary itches, and waiting for any sign of what to do next.

It would not be so bad, he thought, if the sea had anything to say about the journey that lay ahead for him. At first he’d watched with full attention, hungry for predictions, as Silais cracked open the clams with her powerful jaws. He would stay close to her side as she divined their messages, trying to see for himself the meaning that she sought in the meat and broken shells. It had occurred to him that if the seers were of the line of Doeli, then so he must be too, so why shouldn’t he be able to see them as well? But it was no use, and in any case the sea had nothing to say about fantastical journeys and distant lands, but berry harvests and good hunting. And so, one clam after another, the sea’s omens became boredom, and his mind wandered, to imagine what adventures _did_ lie ahead, and so he remembered that this was the last day he would ever walk by Silais’ side along Sunrise Cove, and once again he felt that uneasy sensation he felt before, that feeling of deep longing and yearning for a place that he had yet to leave, but soon would.

He tried to forget about it, because Silais was now trying to drag aside a large, heavy strand of seaweed, and it was one of those huge things several nicheling lengths long, all covered in translucent pods and smelling of the deepest seas. Yuki had heard that down there were fish with teeth longer than his tail and great dead, white eyes, and that thought was enough to distract him from his pre-emptive homesickness for at least a moment. A myriad of sand fleas scattered in the sun as he helped the older seer pull it away. But as he looked back up, he saw a pale shape walking across the sands, and he knew that it must be Laana. There were others out today, looking for omens just like Silais, and perhaps one of them might have found news of his journey, but as she approached and he could see a little better, he knew it to be his aunt. From the way she walks on mismatched and elegant paws, to the simplistic strands of seaweed draped over her dark antlers, there was nobody he knew better.

Normally he would have bolted from Silais’ side and run to Laanas, but he stayed where he was, and not out of fear of the bluebird. Nor, either, the solemnness that had fallen upon him when he had first seen the sign of the snows. This was no more than the final realisation that after this moment, he would never see Silais again.

Silais knew it too. She looked up, letting the heavy seaweed fall back to the sand, and Yuki felt a paw, its claws sharp but gentle, come to rest upon his back.

“You are ready?” said Silais.

“Yes.” Laana stopped, her nimble paws raised, waiting for Yuki.

“The sea has nothing to say of your journey,” said Silais. “Where you go, you go alone.”

Yuki caught a brief flattening of Laana’s ears, but he paid it little attention, and instead closed his eyes, resting his head against Silais’ thick chest fur. It tickled him on the nose. For a moment, all was still and quiet, and to Yuki it was as if this would all stay the same, if he never opened his eyes again. But open them he must, when he heard Laana by his ear. “Yuki,” she said, “are you ready to go?”

He looked up at Silais, standing over him. “Go on,” she said, and bent down to give him a gentle nudge in his aunt’s direction. He stumbled toward Laana, but still was unable to turn away from the elder seer.

Silais settled into a crouch, tucking her sharp claws into the fur of her chest. “You understand,” she said, now that she was closer to his level, “that perhaps the sea does not speak for you, because you are not of the sea. You are of the snow. Perhaps different signs will guide you. Laana’s clam was a message for us; the rest is all yours.”

“Why yes!” said Laana. She placed her nimble paw over Yuki’s shoulder, drawing him closer. “Who knows what you’ll see?”

“But it takes time to know how to read the seas,” Silias continued. “So don’t fear if you don’t understand right away… because I know your aunt didn’t!” Laana’s eyes widened at Silais’ words, but she still managed a little purr of amusement.

Yuki finally found his voice, but his ears were low and his tail curled around his body, and no amount of adventure could change how he felt. “But I’ll miss you.”

“I know.” Silais got to her feet and bent over the young nicheling to give him a lick on the head, flattening what little of a mane he had grown. “And I will miss you. But you are only doing what we have always done, and what we all knew would be done. I have no desire to see snow, but Kois was right. Now, you should join her. She must be waiting!”

  


Further inland, away from the gentle shore and the never-ceasing waves, deep in the tall grass, Kois rose from her nest in silence before the bones of her mother and father. There were no words to say, because all the words she had, she had already spoken, and if there were any words to ensure safe passage to the snow, they had long been lost in the time of her ancestors. But she could not stay silent, and it struck her that she should speak, even if it were only words that she had brought forth for this moment. So she turned away from the bones and to the nest that she had been born in, though it had been broken and rewoven that surely none of the original must remain. And with claws as curved and sharp as any predator’s, she tore it apart. The dry weave broken under her paws, yellowed grass and sweet roots and rabbil fur scattered beneath her, and as she clawed and rent at her home, she spoke. “Yuki guide me. Annka shelter me. Nikisha bring me strength.”

When the nest was destroyed beneath her paws, she took up a mouthful of dry old grass and laid it by her mother’s skull. It was much like her own, broad and powerful in form, with curled horns spiralling outward. The same she did for the skull of her father. His was altogether different, narrow and long but no lesser in strength. Its surface was ridged, its jaws full of sharp teeth, and his horns had been bigger than any seen on the island before or since, great antlers that made the seers’ look like twigs in comparison. She remembered the tribe shrinking back into the grass as he passed by, yet never in her memory had he harmed anything bigger than a rabbil. Struck back into silence, with no more ancestors to call upon, she reached out for other names, other stories that had made it to the tribe, until at the end she reached the name all tribes knew. “Doeli bring me insight. Mela forgive me. Meis feed my hunger. Tata stay away.”

With no more words, she scattered the last remains of her nest, turning swiftly in place over where it had stood. With one slam of her clubbed tail, she sent all the old grass and dust into the air, to rise as a cloud and settle over the tall grass. And at last she turned away and vanished into that same grass, and left behind the bones of her past, so that in time they would return to the earth.

  


Kois was familiar with the hunting trails that wound their way through the island, intersecting and weaving together, forming a network through the thicker grasses that would otherwise hinder a nicheling’s passing. Each one led to water, or shelter, or good hunting grounds. Those that the tribe used frequently became well worn and full of familiar scents, but as Kois moved on to the forgotten shore, they became narrow and overgrown. Even the grass grew taller and its stems toughened. Its deep, dark green blades covered even Kois from sight. In its midst she shouldered aside leaves and kept her ears perked forward, listening for the boom of waves on a rocky shore. But sound did not carry well here, and nor did scent, and all she could smell was the earthy, leafy surroundings, and all she could hear was the rustling of leaves. So Kois guided herself by memory, trusting the trail ahead. Even the sun did not seem to shine so brightly under the dense growth.

Yet there were signs of activity even here. Curious nichelings had followed the trail in the past few days, leaving broken stems and faint scents to mark their passage. Despite all Kois had heard, there was a sense that some invisible force had drawn them near, to investigate if not to make the jump for themselves, and maybe some would be curious enough to go further. And in time Kois could hear the sea ahead, and she was left overlooking the last vestiges of the land that had been home.

A spit of land trailed into pale blue-green water, vanishing under its gentle surface. Deep below the ridge continued, winding on until it resurfaced as a speck of land a short swim away, and then another, and another. They faded from view in time, but this was one of those clear days, when the sun was bright and the sky free from clouds, that she could see all the way to that faint purple-grey smudge on the horizon that meant new land. The wind blew in from the sea, carrying with it the smell of salt and ruffling the short grass and white flowers that grew over this last land. She stepped with care, unwilling to disturb this wild and yet peaceful place. Grass and flowers tickled her paws as she walked.

Ahead there grew a stand of berry bushes, stunted by wind but still bearing fruit. White shapes moved around, revealing themselves as she approached as Laana and Yuki. They had already been hard at work before Kois’ arrival, as was evident from the pile of fruit that sat beside them, already as tall as Yuki himself. The little white nicheling leapt to his feet at Kois’ approach, and as he ran to her she reached out one massive paw and drew him close to her. Laana was more subdued, looking up with her ears perked as Yuki disengaged from Kois’ embrace.

“Is there only you?” Kois said, walking closer with Yuki staying by her side.

“So far,” said Laana.

And it was true that the sun had only just passed its zenith, and there was time for others to gather, for nichelings move at their own pace. There would be others. In the meantime there was food to gather and eat; there would be nothing on the tiny islands out at sea except for the odd crabbit if they were lucky. Thus it was important that they eat their fill, and berries were a rate treat for Kois, who was not dextrous enough to pick them without clawing them half to pieces in the process. They were a little smaller than usual, like the bushes that bore them, but no less sweet.

And then there was little to do but wait. Kois would watch over the sea, or turn her attention to the tall grass, but watching would not make anyone arrive sooner or the next day come faster. So she curled up by the food pile, ears pricked for unusual sounds but eyes closed, and breathed in the smell of flowers and salt and cool, fresh air.

It was not so later in the day that the grass began to rustle again, and all three of them looked up. There were two other nichelings in the tall grass, and though Kois did not know them, Yuki burst forth with a shout of “Tanu! Meana!”

“Well hello!” Meana, a sandy coloured female, was the first to step out of the grass and meet Yuki with an affectionate headbutt. Tanu, a male whose pelt was the dusky colour of clouds at a sunset, held back, scratching at a spot on his chest, a sure sign that he was about to gain his third gem. He kept looking around, as scanning for predators or imagining that he was already beset on all sides by balance bears. But he was not too wary to accept a friendly nudge from Yuki.

“Is it only you?” said Meana. “Some of the others were talking about coming. But I didn’t know how many of them would actually do it.” She settled down near to Kois, curling her tail around sharp clawed feet. Like Tanu she bore only two green gems, but they were bright with vitality, and from her size – already taller and doubtless heaver too than Laana – she was also close to her third. “But I know I’d always be regretting it if I didn’t go, and Tanu...” she looked back at the pinkish adolescent, who had gone chasing after a rabbil’s alarm call - “he’s been having a hard enough time here.”

“And I am glad to have you along,” said Kois.

It turned out Meana and Tanu were accomplished hunters, and so the little tribe in the making feasted on rabbil meat as well as berries. Soon the hunting turned to play-fights and chases between the younger nichelings. Laana was not so inclined to partake in such things and made that quite clear as she watched from the sidelines, alert for any harm that might befall Yuki, though it was only play. Kois held back too, cautious that a careless blow from her tail or claws could shatter bone and gems, but she would happily sit still and watch, or let Yuki climb onto her back to get a better view of the world around him. His eyes were not good enough to let him see the distant land like she could, but she pointed a claw in its direction to show him where it was.

Another rustle in the grass, and Yuki nearly fell from his perch, digging claws in to Kois’ fur to steady himself. He hopped down to greet the newcomers, one of which Kois did recognise this time as some nephew or great-nephew of Silais herself, Kirro. With his white coat and dark antlers, he might have been one of the rare male seers, had his round paws been better able to grapple with clams. Alongside him was another female who Yuki knew as Iskome, whose pelt appeared black until bright sunlight revealed ghostly black stripes, barely a shade darker than their background. They both lay out on the grass close to where Kois and Laana rested, rolling over to relish the warm sun as Yuki came to talk with them about what they thought the new island would be like.

And there were others too, as the day wore on, more youngsters with two gems, or those who had only just gained their third, diggers and foragers and hunters and fishers, and by the time the sun began to set there were perhaps eight or nine of them all together. None of them had seen snow before, and none could imagine it, but they had all done something Kois would be grateful for. They had stepped out of their lives to see what lay over the water. For a moment she wondered if she had torn them from their homes for the sake of a story, but as they all gathered, eager to begin their journey, she could see that they had made their choice. Every few generations, a tribe would become restless, and its younger members would, despite trepidation, feel the sea’s pull. It was something far older than her, older even than the stories of Yuki.

But none of them would swim out now. The night was for resting and gathering strength before the journey, and so as the sun vanished over the far horizon, the little band of explorers found a more sheltered hollow to spend the night, close enough that they could still hear the waves and smell the salt, but away from the wind that blew day and night from the sea. Here they curled up, and Laana came to settle by Kois’ side, pressing against the much bigger nichelings’s form. Kois responded by curling her tail around the seer’s body, just as she had done when they were younger and Laana would jump at strange sounds in the grass.

Though none of them had ever undertaken such a journey, they knew one tradition, and that was to tell a story before embarking to bring hope and inspiration to the travellers. Naturally, there was plenty of debate about which one to tell.

“Do Tata and the Bluebird King!” said one nicheling, a little two-gem who had come along with his twin.

“No, that one’s too scary!” said his double, glancing up at the sky.

“Meis and the Nut Trees?” said another.

“I want Zachi’s Trials!”

(“Goodness...” mumbled Laana, so only Kois could hear, “that one is _far_ too unhappy...”)

“Well _I_ want Mela’s Fortune!”

“Hey now,” said Kirro, laid out in the grass with his paws stretched out in front of him. “I don’t mind what you tell, but I think it should be one of his, you think?”

All eyes fell on Yuki, who was sitting between Kois’ massive forepaws. He looked up at her, clearly uncertain if he wanted this much attention. And Kois, though she knew many stories of the old Yukirs, did not consider herself a storyteller by any stretch of the imagination.

“I think,” she said, “that Laana found the clam, so she should choose the story.”

“Me?” said Laana. “Oh well, if you think so.” She looked away for a moment, in the direction of the sea. “Then I’ll tell you the _first_ story. The Tale of Tata’s Paw...”


	7. The Tale of Tata’s Paw

In the beginning, there was the sea and the sky. The sky was dark and bore no sun or moon, and the sea lay deep and still under its formless expanse. And through the world walked Eve.

There was no land, so she walked in the water, and where her paws touched the sea floor they brought up mud, and that mud became the islands that we live upon. When Eve’s gems shone, they let out a light so powerful that one became the sun and the other the moon, and together they scattered the light of the third and that became the stars.

Under her light the islands began to flourish. Seeds buried deep in the mud grew into tall grass and bushes full of fruit, and soon the islands were green and lush. Drawn by the warmth, a stagmole tunnelled to the surface, and became the first animal to see the sun. He did not care for it, but when he returned to tell of what he had seen, the other animals were drawn to the light and the abundance of food that he spoke of. And so they emerged from the underground, all the animals you have ever seen, the rabbils and bearyena, the crabbits and even the bluebirds in the sky, they all entered the world.

One creature, exploring this bright new place, came across something shiny in the ground. She tried to dig out out and found it was a shard of Eve’s light, and it shone upon her chest and became her gems, and she was the first nicheling.

The nichelings had found themselves in a beautiful home, full of food and greenery, and so they spread across it and had many children, and for a while all was well. But soon their little island became crowded with their children and their children’s children. The bushes were stripped of fruit, the rabbils were scarce, and nichelings went hungry among the bones of their tribemates.

Some, realising that the island could not support so many of their kind, tried to cross the sea and find new lands to settle. And so they did, but everywhere they travelled, then found terrible things. In the deserts there was no water. In the savannahs, wildfires consumed their nests, and there was nothing to eat but the withered fruits of cacti that stung when you tried to eat them. The jungles were full of deadly plants and savage apes, and in the mountains they encountered blizzards so cold they froze nichelings solid, and some say that if you visit the very coldest mountains, you can still find them trapped within the ice.

(A few of the assembled travellers exchanged nervous looks. “What’s an ape?” said Meana, flexing her claws.

“I don’t know, but it was always in the story when Silais used to tell it,” said Laana. “I suppose it is some kind of monster, but it doesn’t live in the mountains, I’m sure.”

“Are we going to freeze solid?” said one of the twins.

“Not if we stay together,” said Kois.)

Those nichelings who managed to swim home all told different stories, but each ended the same way. “We cannot survive there.” Yet their home island became more crowded by the day, and survive there they must.

With nowhere else to turn, the nichelings called for Eve to help them. Eve was compassionate, and when she saw her children’s plight, she made a deal. “Gather food and plants and earth from the places you wish to go,” she said, “and bring them to me.”

So the nichelings did just that. They swam out and brought back fir branches and vines, cactus spines and withered berries, sand and snow and shells. It was dangerous work, and not all of them made it back, but eventually they had a pile in the middle of the island that grew day after day with all their treasures.

Now in those days there was a nicheling who loved tricks and games of all kinds. His friends called him Clay, after his brown pelt, but you will know him by another name, Tata. Tata had grown tired of playing tricks on his tribemates, though, and he thought that it would be a grand thing indeed to prank Eve. Surely the tribe would never see such a trick before or since! So he thought for many days of what to do, while his tribemates gathered from other lands, and at last he had an idea. He went out and dug up a ball of clay, and left it in the pile. There he hid it, under all the other trinkets so nobody would know it was there.

When Eve came to look upon the pile in the shining light of day, nobody noticed Tata’s contribution. And on that day, the tribe came to the centre of the island, where Eve stood, and received her blessings. One by one, she looked over the treasures they had brought, and the nichelings were transformed. When Eve found jungle vines, she gave her children bright poisonous coats and soft paws that would make no sound, to hide and defend from the predators that lurked within. From sand and cacti, she gave out slender, fast bodies and long ears to shed the sun’s fierce heat. From the shells came fins and the secret of breathing underwater. And from the snow, there came thick pelts and strong claws so that their bearers may take down any prey they needed.

But deep down in the pile, Eve found the dirt, and it transformed her children in ways nobody, not even Tata, had expected. Nichelings who had come expecting Eve’s gifts were left with withered, useless paws, twisted snouts and teeth, eyes white with blindness and blood that flowed and flowed without end from even the least of wounds. In shock they looked for the one to blame, and Tata, upon seeing what he had done, fled the gathering. It was the worst move he could have made, because everyone knew he liked to play tricks, and now everyone knew who was responsible.

In her anger Eve scooped up the dirt and hurled it at Tata as he ran, and it hit him upon the left paw. He stumbled and fell to the ground as his paw shrivelled and grew too tiny and twisted to walk upon. But the tribe were still on his tail, so he struggled to his feet and raced off on three legs, and vanished into the tall grass.

The tribe never saw Tata again after that day. Where he fled, nobody knows and nobody will know, not even Eve, and perhaps it was his tricks and clever mind that saved his life from the anger of his tribe and any more of Eve’s retributions. But he was not finished with the world, and long after Eve had withdrawn into sleep, her work done, so Tata emerged again.

Sometimes he would look different, and sometimes he bore a new name – Clay again, or Reef, or Maeta – but he was always the same, always looking for a new trick to play, a tribe leader to outsmart, or anything else that he found amusing. And so he walks the world today, but he has never forgotten his first trick, for Eve will never let him forget as long as he looks at his paw.


	8. Any Port...

Kois awoke in the early dawn light. The first glimmer of day had yet to rise above the horizon, but a light wash of blue over the night sky told her it would soon arrive. All around her the little expedition slept on, heedless for the moment of the oncoming day.

By her side Laana lay curled up into a ball, her snout resting upon Kois’ right paw and Yuki tucked into the hollow between them, and Kois wondered if this was how it was to be a seer, curled up together in their cave. She knew she would not fall back asleep before the dawn, but nor could she bring herself to move. Laana’s body was warm, her coat soft and her breathing deep and slow and gentle, and to Kois merely being here and feeling her and Yuki’s pelts as they lay together fed some hidden hunger she had not previously acknowledged, as if her skin itself had missed the presence of others.

Eventually, though, she could remain no longer, and she withdrew her paw with great care to avoid disturbing her companions. Laana’s eyes flickered open as Kois sat up, and she too stretched and yawned. “Is it time?” Her eyes were still half lidded in the pre-dawn. Yuki slept on, curled up by the hollow of Laana’s foreleg.

“Not yet,” said Kois.

“I see.” Laana looked up at the eastern sky’s pale light. She yawned again, deep and long. “Well, I suppose I won’t be sleeping much longer this morning. Let me find you some berries.” She got to her feet and stretched each limb one by one, her toes splayed wide and her back arched. Yuki still had not woken, and even when she lifted him by the scruff he made only a few wordless murmurs. With care she deposited him by the other explorers, so that he would stay warm, and touched her nose to his in parting.

Kois would have protested that Laana do no such thing and get some more sleep, but she knew better. There lay, deep within the seer’s soul, something of her sister Reko’s stubborn streak.

The grass underfoot felt damp with a sprinkling of dew. The two nichelings walked together up the ridge, where a few berry bushes still bore fruit after yesterday’s feast. Laana picked one, and nudged it toward Kois. Together they sat, watching the waves shimmer ahead as the sun rose at their backs. That distant land they sought lay hidden in the night’s remnants still, deep within the last of the darkness and the mists of morning, yet Kois remembered where it might be found.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Laana plucked another berry, adding it to the pile she had begun for when the others woke. “Oh, you know just as well as I do I would never be able to go back to sleep!”

“No. For agreeing to leave.”

“Oh.” Laana had that far away look in her eyes again, and even her voice seemed to trail off into another place. “What can I say...” Kois felt her lean into her side, twining her nimble paw against one of Kois’ sturdy forelegs. “There is nothing left for me here. I couldn't stand to...” She said no more, and pressed her cheek to Kois' shoulder, in the way of leaving her scent behind.

Kois felt a purr rise in her throat, and for a moment tried to stifle it, but the seer seemed to take some comfort from the deep rumbling tone, and nuzzled against her. She let out a faint purr of her own in response, though difficult to hear against Kois’ bass. Her pelt was as soft to the touch as Kois recalled from her waking moments, and her sharp little antlers rubbed against Kois’ side, but the sensation was not unpleasant. It felt like a deep itch being scratched at long last.

“She would have come along too... Reko, I mean. She would have loved it.”

“She would.” Kois had trusted to memory in her journey here, and one of those memories returned to her now: Reko, only just come into her third gem, cutting through overgrown paths with quick slashes of her claws. Behind her Kois and Laana followed, their own second gems only just emerging, the skin around them still unbearably itchy. The grass threatened to swallow them up, but they kept pace with Reko until she led them out into the open. Still they stayed close to one another, looking up at the sky; neither of them had been old enough to lose their fear of the bluebirds, even though they were getting too big to be carried off. But there were no wings overhead, and Reko bounded forth, raising her clawed paw at the island chain stretching out to sea. “Look! There’s a whole other island out there! Isn’t that exciting!”

As if imagining the same memory, Laana stepped forward. “Imagine her now. Imagine what she’d think of _me_ , swimming out there!” Her ears were perked forward, and when she looked back at Kois her three blue gems shone with such dazzling intensity that they might have been the gems of Eve herself. “Oh but… this isn’t about me, is it? It’s all about you. You’re the one who brought us here.” She walked back to where Kois sat, standing with her nimble paw lifted, a gesture that Kois understood to mean she was waiting for the other’s word of confirmation.

“Yes,” said Kois, “but it was you who found the clam, and all of it was Yuki’s doing.”

“And would we ever have known what it all meant without you?” Laana reared up on her hind-legs, reached out a paw, and gave Kois’ central gem a playful tap. Immediately she recoiled, her ears flattened. “Oh no! I’m so sorry! Why did I do that?” She crouched in the grass, flattening her body to the ground in an effort to look smaller.

Kois tilted her head and made a wordless, perplexed sound in her throat. To touch a stranger’s gems was a terrible breach, for it meant to touch the other’s soul, but among close tribemates, be they friends or family, it was a display of affection. Even Yuki had done it, though he had to balance on his back legs to reach all the way.

Laana seemed to remember that and sat up again, though she avoided looking at Kois, instead fixing her gaze on a nearby berry bush. “Oh… yes… it was nothing.” But she still stayed hunched over, her ears slightly flattened in  embarrassment.

“Laana.” Kois lifted a paw. “May I?”

Though Laana’s posture still gave the impression of being scolded, she did sit up and lift her head in agreement, and so Kois touched her paw to the three blue gems embedded at her collar. She touched them lightly, as always, forever conscious of the oversized claws she held at her friend’s throat. But she felt the softness of Laana’s ruff against her pawpads, and nestled in the silky fur, her gems. Each was smooth and glassy, and slightly cold to the touch, as if water could be solid but without the harsh coldness of ice. Kois felt them shift a little as Laana breathed in and out. It was the only movement she made whilst she looked up, not quite meeting Kois’ eyes. But her ears were no longer flattened, her posture no longer submissive, yet Kois, still mindful of her strength, did not allow the touch to persist for more than a moment before taking her paw away.

“You’re right,” she said, still holding her paw in the air, hanging onto its sense-memory of soft fur and smooth gems. “This _is_ my day. And that’s why I want to share it with you.”

Laana leaned to one side, looking at a point behind Kois in the distance. “Then I hope you want to share with them, too.”

The others had woken by now, and were walking up to the spit of land. It was to nobody’s surprise that Yuki was in the lead, and he bounded over to meet them, giving Kois an affectionate headbutt in the foreleg. “Found you!”

“Yes, you did.” Kois nudged him a little with her nose, enough to make him dig his claws into the dirt to avoid being bowled over. He made a high pitched call of amusement.

“And now you all need to eat!” said Laana, her attention now back to the berry bushes. “You especially, Yuki. It’s a long swim, and there won’t be any food on the way.” She plucked a berry as big as her paw and laid it down for him to eat. “That goes for all of you!”

Perhaps it was Laana’s time as a respected seer, but Kois had to admire her friend’s much greater knack for rallying a crowd, which was far greater than she could have hoped for herself. The morning had hardly had a chance to begin before every berry bush, so it seemed, had been picked clean by hungry explorers. Laana and Yuki helped out for those with claws too big or clumsy to pick fruit themselves. Those whose skills were best suited to hunting found a few rabbils to share. But this was not yesterday’s feast, but a last moment gathering. Even so, a couple of the young nichelings who had chosen to come along found time to speak with Kois.

“Thanks for telling us about this,” said Kirro, whilst Kois lay in the grass, resting in anticipation of the journey ahead. “I’ve never been good at anything except fishing.” He lay in the grass before her and stretched his forelegs out before him, and flexed his tail as he spoke. It was long and skinny, with a tuft at the end. Kois thought she could remember seeing him sometimes, lounging by the island’s rivers and streams, dangling that tail like a lure for the silver fish that swam in their cold waters. “Could you teach me some of the stories you know? Or… do you have _songs?_ ” His normally calm voice suddenly rose in excitement.

Kois admitted, as she always had done, that Laana was the far superior storyteller, but it occurred to her that someone ought to remember the Yukir’s stories beside her, and so she agreed to pass on what she knew when they found the snows. Later Meana found her too. “How hard is it to hunt walrus deer?” she asked, showing off her clawed paw. “And thankyou! I didn’t know I needed to do this but now I can’t wait to see what’s out there!”

Kois was hardly in a position to answer that, as not even her ancestors had seen a walrus deer for many generations, but there was no time to wonder.  She could feel the gathering anticipation and energy of the explorers, like a storm waiting to build. Their wandering and hunts had begin to gravitate toward the spit, from no one individual’s motion but a growing understanding that this was where they ought to be. Kois could no more ignore the mounting restlessness than she could hunger or thirst. She joined Yuki and Laana, and together they walked to where the most adventurous of the expedition was already waiting.

The spit was a ridge of land that rose and fell, jutting out into the sea like a long claw. At its highest point, where Kois and Laana had shared berries in the dawn, it gave a full view of the causeway. As it reached the water it gradually declined and become narrower, until it was no more than a thin strip of grass, barely wide enough for two or three nichelings to walk abreast, flanked on both sides by sand. Here the grass was tough, not soft as it had been on the ridge. Its stems and leaves were low to the ground and sharp underfoot, strengthened by constant exposure to wind and salt. A few hardy flowers grew around it, but they too were small things. They grew nestled in the grass, and their bright yellow flowers were not even the size of a one-gem’s paw. It felt as if the land was slowly giving up against the sea, but still holding with the last it could muster.

But even this hardy vegetation had to dwindle eventually, and Kois and her companions soon arrived at the end, where the grass vanished and there was nothing but sand for a nicheling’s length, and then only turquoise sea.

A few of the explorers had already reached this point, among them Meana and Tanu, and the others were not far behind. Laana padded into the shallows and stretched her neck out, sniffing at the sea breeze. “Now Yuki,” she said, “we all have to swim for that small island first. I know you can do it.”

Yuki trotted out to his aunt’s side in the shallows, letting the waves wash over his paws. His back was turned, so Kois could not see, but she knew he was squinting at the first island. From here it looked like a low mound of sand rising from the blue-green water, and even though they were closer than before, it appeared paradoxically further away. Thanks to their low vantage point, it perched close to the horizon, and their even more distant final target was out of sight.

“I’ll stay with you.” Meana splashed into the shallows by Yuki’s side and thumped her flat, wide tail on the wet sand. “I’m not bad at swimming.”

“Which I suppose means I have to as well,” said Tanu, with a grimace on his fanged face as he looked over the distance between them and their first goal. But Yuki looked all the happier for their support, and gave both of them friendly headbutts (which Tanu clearly pretended not to like).

The stragglers had caught up by now, led by the black furred digger Iskome. “This is all of us,” she said. “ What do we do now, is there something you have to say?” She was looking up at Kois, and so, Kois realised, was everyone else.

Kois’ tail swayed slowly. Now that they were all here, there was nothing to delay them. Maybe Iskome was right, and there was a speech that should be made at this time, a blessing for the journey ahead.  But as she stepped into the shallows and felt cold water wash over her paws, and left behind deep footprints in the sand that marked the last her home island had to give, she knew there were none. The time for words had passed; now, there were only actions. “We swim.”

And so she stepped into deeper water, feeling it engulf her stomach and chest and rise over her gems, but she did not mind the cold. Soon the sand was gone from beneath her paws, and she struck out across the water, the other explorers paddling in her wake.

Most nichelings can swim, although some better than others, and few make a habit of it unless specially adapted for the water. None of the explorers had fins to help propel them along, or even better gills to let them dive without worrying about air, but all of them were in high spirits and there were no strong currents to wash them off course, so they swam as well as they could toward the first island. Even Kois, who being so large and heavy had rarely ventured into the water before, soon found her rhythm. Beside her swam Laana, swifter and better practised from a life spent diving for deeper omens, yet staying close by her side. Behind them Meana and Tanu kept their promise, staying on either side of Yuki, and in their wake came all the others. Kois felt lighter in the water, propped up by its buoyancy, and though she was far from elegant the effort of paddling felt pleasant, like a long run and a good hunt through the meadow.

It was still not yet noon when Kois hauled herself onto the first of their waypoint islands, but her shadow was small upon the ground, telling her it was not far away. With a deep breath she pulled herself out of the sea, dripping water upon the sand. Her body’s weight returned as she walked, hunched over, to what passed for the centre of the island. It was about three or four nicheling lengths at its widest point, and rose to a low mound where a few scraps of the same grass and small yellow flowers that had grown on the spit clung to existence.

Behind her came Laana, licking the seawater from her ruff as she stepped onto land with light paws. The seaweed draped from her antlers had washed away, but she paid it no mind and did not paw at where it would have hung as she might otherwise have done. Kois inclined her head downward in greeting, and Laana touched the bridge of her muzzle to Kois’ forehead, in between her curled horns.

The others were not far behind. First came Yuki, flanked by Meana and Tanu. Yuki ran back to his guardians, whilst Tanu complained about all the water in his fur and Meana told him that if he hadn’t wanted to get wet, he should have gone elsewhere. “Ready for the next one?” she said, as the rest of the explorers caught up.

“Oh no,” said Laana. “This is a long journey; we need to pace ourselves and keep warm.” Her words were met with frustration from the more adventurous nichelings, but relief from those who were not so bold and wanted a rest before moving on.

They spent a short while on that island, though it was scarcely big enough to hold them all,  grooming the salt water from their coats and warming themselves in the sun. Kois felt an ache in her muscles, but just as the exertion of swimming, it felt good, an affirmation that she could meet the challenges ahead of her. By her side Laana ran her dextrous paw’s digits through her ruff, picking at a few knots.

But they could not stay long, as they would have to reach their final island by nightfall and find shelter and fresh water, which there was none of here, so they were soon back in the sea. Another small island followed, and another and another, and each time they stopped again to rest and warm up before striking back out across the sea.

It was past noon, by their lengthening shadows, when they came to yet another crossing island, all huddled together on the sand, and saw that their home island, the only land they had known for all their lives, had vanished below the horizon, and that they had, without a doubt, entered an unknown world.


	9. ...In A Storm

“It’s really gone,” said Iskome. “That means...”

The new island was now on the horizon, and no longer a faint smudge on a clear day. There was still a long way to go, but now the explorers could see green shores ahead. Some of them stretched their necks out, trying to get a closer look despite the distance. Knowing that Yuki might have trouble seeing, Kois raised a paw to indicate the direction. “Do you see?” she said.

“It looks like a… green hazy thing?” Yuki tilted his head. He was sitting between Kois’ forelegs, where he could quickly warm up from her body heat.

“It looks like that to me, too.” Even with good eyes, there was little to see. “There’ll be more soon.”

“Green?” said Tanu. “I thought snow was supposed to be white?”

“Yes, well...” Laana pawed at the sand. “There was no other way to leave, and… and...”

“Snow is often found on high ground,” said Kois, recalling stories of grassy slopes, deep green conifers, and barren peaks. “If there are mountains inland, they will have snow.”

“Oh yes!” Laana said, sitting bolt upright. “Of course! Well then, all we have to do is keep swimming!”

A mumble of discontent arose from the explorers, even though everyone knew that there was nothing else they could do. All of them had started the day in high spirits, but as the day wore on the reality of crossing the sea, even with points to rest, had made its presence felt. Many of them sat with hunched postures and lowered ears, never quite able to dry themselves off; even the sun had started to vanish in an increasingly cloudy sky, as if mimicking their motivation. With their pelts clinging wetly to their bodies, they took on a skinny and underfed look. Even Kois felt herself flagging. But worse than the soreness and the cold, there was no food or water. Even the scraggly grasses that grew on the first few islands had dwindled, and now they found themselves hauling out onto lifeless sandy rises. They had known this would be the way of things, but all of them had come from a meadow tribe used to abundance, and none had gone so long without as much as a drink. Kois found herself looking at the shimmering waves and using all her resolve to merely stay in place and not plunge her muzzle into what looked like so much fresh, cool water all around.

Even the sea had changed. The gulfs between islands were no longer shallow turquoise waters, but deep, near black abysses opening into the underworld. And yet again and again, the explorers returned to the undrinkable water, straining to reach the next waypoint.

Kois looked up. The sun was behind a cloud again, and they were growing thicker and darker with every passing moment. As she watched, a raindrop fell and hit her on the nose. It was no isolated incident; the clouds had started to run across the sky like rabbils, and more droplets began to fall, scattering into the sea.

“You predicted rain a few days ago, didn’t you?” said Kois.

“Yes, plenty,” said Laana, “but we shouldn’t-”

“If it gets bad, we have to make a choice.”

“A choice of _what?_ ” snapped Tanu. “We’re in the middle of the ocean!”

“Can we sit and wait it out?” said Iskome.

“I don’t think so,” Kois dragged her claws through the sand, which was now pitted with damp spots where the rain had fallen. “We need to move.”

“We can’t go back,” said Laana. “It’s too far, and this is too important for you! You waited all your life for this! And what if it’s just rain?”

“She’s right,” said a small voice by Kois’ feet. Yuki was pressed close to her stomach, trying to borrow as much warmth as he could.

And she wanted to listen to Yuki of all creatures, the one she had been told would lead her to the new lands, the one whose guidance she should trust the most, but was he a god, or a cub? But he pulled away from her and stepped out into the shallows, the ruff around his neck raised and his tail fluffed out to twice its normal size, and for a moment she could see in her mind the nicheling he would become.

“I’m going!” he said. “It’s not far, and we came all this way!” And the consensus among the explorers was the same. Rain or no rain, they had to keep going. Perhaps it would give them a little fresh water at last, perhaps it would be light or short lived, even though the clouds grew rapidly darker above. So once more, they returned to the sea.

But the rain did not subside. It fell harder and faster, and the drops stung as they hit. Kois wanted to dive just to get away from them for a moment or two before she had to breathe, but the next island was nearly lost in a grey haze of rain and she could not afford to lose sight of it. She forced her way through the water as the waves became rougher and she felt herself thrown up and down. “Keep going!” she could hear Laana shout over the rising wind. “Keep swimming and follow me!” She was no longer by Kois’ side but swimming ahead, letting her white coat serve as a beacon for those trailing behind.

Kois might never have found the next island without her guidance, as it was no more than a sandbank that hardly broke the surface, washed over by waves that forced the smaller of the explorers to dig their claws in lest they be swept away. Had it always been like this, or had the rain and waves worn down the sands as they swam? No, she could not call it rain any more. This was a full blown storm screaming through the sky, heedless of anything as small and insignificant as a group of nichelings huddled together on an island’s last remains.

Kois tried licking the water from her coat, hoping that by sitting in the rain at least some of it would be fresh, but it was scant comfort. If the explorers had looked tired before, now they were downright miserable. The twins, who were the youngest, cried out while Iskome and Kirro tried to shelter them from the waves, and Tanu for once had nothing to say, sitting in a crouch with the sort of foul expression that told the world he had finally run out of complaints. And at Kois’ feet there was Yuki again, both his paws wrapped tight around one of hers.

“We-” Kois began, but she was cut off. The sea withdrew, leaving them standing on bare sand for a moment, and then returned in the form of a wave as tall as Kois herself. It smashed into them and washed over their bodies in an instant of cold and chaos. Without thinking Kois snatched up Yuki in her jaws, holding him fast as the water receded, and dug her claws into the sand even though she could feel it being washed away under her paws. Only when the water was gone did she allow herself to let go and make a quick headcount. They were all still there, but one more wave like that and there’d be no sandbank left. “We can’t stay! Back in the water!”

Was it the right choice? She was no seafarer, but they were all looking at her. It was her journey. Her day. And she had Yuki’s blessing, Yuki’s guidance. But when she looked down at her feet, she could not see the strong, proud deity who ruled the snows and made the nests bountiful with cubs that she had always imagined, but the frightened and cold one-gem that he was, huddled against her because he had never even had the chance to know a real mother. She licked him with rough strokes of her broad tongue, hoping the clumsy gesture would bring him at least some comfort.

“Yes, yes, back in!” Laana shouted. “Yuki, stay with Meana and Tanu!”

Kois tried to move, but she felt something at her chest and looked down. There, she saw Yuki, balancing on his hind legs so he could reach up and touch his paw to her central gem. _You don’t need to do that,_ she thought. _It’s me who should be leading you._ But though the sight was enough to leave a pain deep inside that manifested as a jolt of guilt in her stomach, she touched noses with him before they both jumped back into the water.

She didn’t even know where the next island was, trusting to Laana to guide them all, but the far shore was closer now, even if the rain masked it – a wooded coastline stretching across the horizon. It wasn’t so far. It wouldn’t have seemed so far at the start of their journey. But not every stroke meant persuading her muscles to move again, and again, and again, yet the strength had ebbed from their core. She pushed on through nothing but willpower, silently composing a call to Nikisha, an ancestor of legend, in the hopes she might borrow her strength. Laana was still ahead of her, a small white shape pushing through choppy waters. The sea rolled up and down, yet Kois continued to follow.

She should have seen the wave. Her first warning came soon enough, just like it had on the sandbank. The sea fell away beneath her, as if it was taking a deep breath in advance of a terrible roar, and for a moment she found herself deep in a watery trough, trying to see where Laana had gone, trying to find the shore – it couldn’t be far now, she couldn’t lose it – and the wave caught her unawares, plunging her into grey water.

The world vanished. All the sounds of the storm – wind and waves and rain hammering the sea and her body – died away, and now they were silenced she felt herself drawn into some other world as she sank. There was no sunlight to strive for, no sky to frantically swim toward. All she could see above was a softly undulating grey canopy as the waves above swelled and crashed and ebbed, leaving a blurred and endlessly shifting pattern of steely half-light. Driven by the urge to breathe, Kois opened her mouth, and her last breath escaped in a great blossoming. She tried to beat her limbs, but all her movements felt slowed down, and they were nothing to the underworld’s pull as she sank.

Dark shadows moved overhead, but her thoughts were slower than her body. She did not have the energy to panic any more than she had the energy to swim. It was quiet down here, and peaceful, and there was no need to struggle, because what use would it be?

Deep below her, the underworld opened up, and in its depths her fading eyesight saw motion and form. Shapes brought to life by unseen forces undulated and shifted, reaching up to guide her ever downward. As she fell, one of them resolved into the form of a nicheling, swimming upward to greet her. He reached out a paw of dark water, beckoning her closer…

Something brushed against her, but it was not the phantom nicheling but something solid and substantial, pushing her upward. Water swirled in flurries of motion as the creature paddled, straining against Kois’ weight and returning her to the surface. A nicheling, a real, warm, living nicheling, with a white pelt and dark horns. Laana.

They broke the surface together and Laana gasped for air, but Kois felt herself unable to move, her throat and chest full of water, her vision faded and her limbs hanging useless by her sides. Laana pushed her further upward, struggling against Kois’ greater weight now that she could no longer reply on the water’s buoyancy but managing to prop the larger nicheling’s head up and hold it out of the water. With her chin resting on Laana’s back, Kois’ chest heaved and she hurled up lungfuls of cold sea, until at last she took a breath and felt her limbs slowly released from their dead grip, her vision coming back into focus. She began to paddle and treat water, whilst Laana swum in circles, looking for something she could not find. With the air came thought and emotion, and with it a cold grip on Kois’ chest as she realised how close she had been to death.

They had to get out of the water now, before another wave came, but Laana was still going around in circles and shouting things Kois could not make out over the wind and rain. Kois struck out again, the fear of the deep giving her one last strength reserve, and it was enough to snap Laana out of it and prompt her to follow. Kois had no idea where the last crossing might be, or if it was even there, but she could see the shore and for the first time she knew that this was the last leg, and soon she would touch the ground.

Laana swam ahead, stumbling out of the water and onto the sand. Kois watched her shake and sink into a sitting position, looking back over her shoulder at Kois’ approach. The first Kois knew of the land was her claws striking sand churned up by waves and her frantic swimming. She let her paws come to rest on the sandy ground and walked the rest of the way as foamy waves buffeted her body and flung spray into the air to mingle with the rain.  As the water receded she felt her body’s full weight return, and she too managed only a few steps on legs that were too shaky to carry her any further up the beach before she sank to the ground, her chest heaving and the last of the waves washing around her.

Laana was calling her name, and the rain still fell hard on her body. She could see the white nicheling not so much walk as crawl over the sand to touch noses with her. “Kois,” she said, though her voice was still hard to hear over the storm. “Kois, are you...”

Kois shifted, trying to sit up, but her legs had done all they could that day, and she flopped back onto the sand. A low growl began deep in her throat, as she scanned her surroundings. A small beach, its sands nearly white, led up to dense rainforest. She had never seen trees like this before, with their thin trunks and long fronds, that shook and whipped around in the wind. The growl rose, becoming louder, giving sound to her frustration. “This was supposed to be my day...” It was a stupid thing, but after all they had been through, after all the hopeful gatherings under a clear sky, it was the first thing she could say.

She hauled herself forward, managing to drag herself at least over the tide line. “Not hurt,” she said. “Been swimming too long.” On any other day the sand might have been softer here, but it was all pelted hard and flat by the rain. She didn’t care. It was land, it was solid, and that was all that mattered. She could rest here with the others, and they would keep one another warm. “Where are they? Laana?”

Laana said nothing,  and she didn’t need to.  The look on her face at Kois’ question told her all she needed to know.


	10. Nikisha’s Lessons

And that was how Kois and Laana found themselves stranded on a tropical shore, far from anything they had ever known. The rest of the day and night they slept the exhausted sleep of those who had nothing more to give, not even the energy to seek shelter. They lay curled up together on the sand, and Kois’ bulk sheltered Laana from the worst of the rain. At some time in the night the storm finally passed, but even this hardly roused them.

The next day dawned so clear and bright it was as if the storm had never been there, and the land and sky wished to deny any trace of it, but the they could not hide the debris washed up from the ocean depths and strewn across the tideline. When Kois patrolled the beach that morning, she did so with the fear of finding small corpses tangled in the driftwood and seaweed, and never had she been more relived to find nothing.

But Laana could not read the patterns left in the sands or hidden within clamshells, even though she decorated her antlers with seaweed from this same beach in the hopes it would help her understand what the sea had to say. Still they had been lucky, in some regards. They had the fortune to find a river nearby in the last stage of its journey to the sea, giving them fresh water, and even if Laana could not divine meaning from the clams she found on the beach, they made for good meals. Sometimes even a rabbil would venture out of the undergrowth. They were fast, lean creatures, not like the fat rabbils that Kois remembered from home, but not always fast enough.

A day and a night passed, and still there was no sign of other nichelings, and so Laana sat over an opened clam, Kois by her side as the river flowed through white sand before them. “We will find them, or they will find us,” Kois had said to her. But immediately after saying it, she wondered who she was trying to reassure. There were no bodies, but nor were there footprints, or hastily dug out shelters, and how could there be? The storm would have washed away any traces. Kois would never say it out loud to Laana, but there were moments when she imagined herself dragging away a heap of driftwood to reveal a tiny body, and feeling relief to at least know of someone’s fate.

Laana closed her eyes and leaned in against Kois’ ruff and shoulder. Once again Kois felt Laana’s antlers brush through the thick fur. A part of her wanted to protest that this shore was hot enough without another nicheling pressed against her side. But she had no heart to push away her only companion. Laana needed this, and so, Kois knew, did she.

She had never seen a place so alien. There was the sea, and the shoreline, and trees and greenery flanking the beach, but all those things were ever so slightly _wrong,_ and it all added to the effect of a world that was not her own, but a few steps removed so that what she saw was more unnerving than it would otherwise have been. She had never seen white sand, or so much turquoise water rippling out to the horizon. The trees were strange, skinny things that did not drop nuts when she hit their trunks with her tail, and instead of proper branches they were smooth and topped with wide green fronds with tattered edges that slowly swayed in the sea breeze.

Even the forest undergrowth looked bizarre to her eyes. A few times she had tried to investigate it, sniffing at the edges and hoping for a familiar scent, but it was quite impassable, a wall of tangled greenery that presented a barrier to a creature of her size and hefty frame. The memories of overgrown trails leading to the causeway back home now seemed, in  comparison , to be well trodden meadow paths, full of the welcoming scents of her tribemates.  All the jungle smelled of was earth and rain and hot water. In such a foreign land, she could not bear to part with the last piece of home.  _Of course it was you who came for me,_ she thought, and closed her own eyes too. She had this, if nothing else.

“I… hurt them,” Laana whispered. “I led them here, I made them come along...”

“Them I’m guilty too,” said Kois, “because we spoke about this. You would never have known to leave if not for me.”

“No, I… oh why can’t I _see_ anything?” Laana broke away, moving to sit by the riverside, tail curled around her paws as she gazed into the clear water. Her blue eyes were unfocused, as though staring at a distant target further away than the sand and water before her. “Oh Doeli… I should be able to see something.” She brushed her nimble paw down the length of her other, runner’s foreleg, and then raised it to touch her gems. “ _I_ should...” Her last statement was a whisper, and had Kois’ ears not been angled in the right direction, she might not have picked it up at all.

Perhaps she was not meant to hear it. But Kois came to sit by Laana’s side anyway, though she kept a respectful distance and did not allow their bodies to touch. From here she could see the water that Laana was trying to scry, but she had none of the seer’s gifts and all she could see was their reflections, distorted by running water.  Below that, a school of silvery fish, smaller than her claw and not worth the effort of catching, swam against the current. Their movements were so fast and sudden that to Kois’ eyes they appeared to blink from one location to another.

Laana said nothing more, but Kois saw her reflection as she touched the seaweed draped from her antlers and ran her paw along the translucent strands.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Kois said.

“I can’t give up,” said Laana.

“We wouldn’t be. But if you can’t find anything here, maybe we were wrong to stay and wait. We should try something that might work – like Nikisha would.”

“Who is Nikisha? We didn’t bring anyone called that, did we?” Laana had, for now, stopped worrying at her antlers or trying to read the river, and had turned her head to face Kois.

“One of my ancestors,” Kois said. The name had come to her when she recalled calling out for strength during the crossing. She was not an ancestor Kois had felt the need to call for before, but these days, it seemed she needed her.

“You mean from the Yukir Tribe?”

“Yes. They were lost and starving, and many of them wanted to give up and vanish into the snow until their gems became dull. They would have stopped having cubs and let the tribe die out with them. But Nikisha was their leader, and she wouldn’t let that happen. So she made them persevere, told them to find food and shelter even when they were too tired to go on. If they couldn’t find it in one place, they had to look elsewhere. They were tired, and they hurt, but they lived. I never liked those stories when my parents told them. Now, I think I know why they did.” They must have called out to Nikisha themselves in the past, Kois imagined, when they had crossed to the island that became their home and resting place. And if she could not call out for Yuki…

“I suppose you’re right,” said Laana, “but where else is there to go?”

Kois stood up and faced upriver. “In there.”

The river flowed from deep within the jungle, and though it was impossible to see where it ultimately led, it cut a clear path through terrain otherwise too densely overgrown to pass. To Kois’ eyes it was a gateway into an impenetrable world. The trees grew thick overhead, giving the impression of a green cave whose depths were as unknown and otherworldly as the see seer’s cave back home, but she could still see its surface glimmer in what sunlight made it through the canopy, like a beacon leading her eyes further inside.

“What?” Laana jumped to her feet. “But the apes… whatever those are...”

In reply Kois slowly lifted her tail and slammed it into the sand. It was not a heavy impact, such as she might make to warn bearyenas away, but it still scattered the sand and made Laana jump again, and Kois could feel the impact reverberate through the ground and into her paws.

“Oh… well, I suppose there is that.” Laana trotted around in a circle, a small release of tension, and came to stand by Kois’ side. “Lead on, Ki-Kois.”

“You don’t need to call me that,” said Kois. They both knew the old titles of respect – Ki, meaning an esteemed leader of a tribe, or greater – but only from stories. Back home, they had no need for them, as their tribe had little to fear or argue about, and so everyone had done as they needed. Even old Silais, who Kois had trusted as an authority, would have cuffed you over the head if you’d been so bold as to call her Ki-Silais. That would have implied that her word and judgement were final for all the tribe, and Silais would call herself “no more than an old seer who is good at what she does, thankyou” if you’d asked her how much weight she carried. “If you will call me Ki-Kois, then I will have to be fair and call you Ki-Laana.”

“Is… that a joke?”

“You will know when I’m telling a joke,” Kois said, with a purr. With that, she walked into the forest at a leisurely pace, swinging her tail. Laana walked by her side, keeping her ears perked forwards, on the alert for strange sounds.

Soon they were under the canopy, and the sea breeze was gone. Down here the air felt damp and heavy with the scent of the red earth under their paws. The dense undergrowth that permeated the forest thinned out by the river’s banks, allowing easier passage into the forest’s depths. Kois suspected other animals besides themselves used it for the same purpose. She sniffed at the ground, but the only familiar tracks and scents were those lithe jungle rabbils she’d seen before. There were none of the different kinds of tracks that gave away the presence of nichelings, although there were others she didn’t know – some big, some small, all evidence of creatures gathering to drink or pass through the jungle.

If the going was easier by the riverside, the trees above made up for it. The deeper the two nichelings ventured, the taller they grew, twice or maybe three times the size of Kois’ old nut tree. Their trunks were bare of leaf of branch until the top, where they blossomed out into wide canopies to grab as much of the sun as they could, leaving only scraps to filter down to the forest floor. In the half-lit gloom, Kois took the lead, her eyes being slightly better adapted to the dark than other nichelings’. There were smells everywhere, but few that either of them recognised over the clash of earth and rain and decaying leaves that filled the air so much that they felt like a physical presence weighing down upon them, as if they could open their mouths, take a bite out of it, and chew. Their ears twitched and swivelled at different sounds – insects chirping and hissing, or a distant bird calling to its fellows.

They had not gone far when Laana nudged Kois in the shoulder to get her attention and said “What is  _that?_ ”

Kois peered into the gloom. The object that Laana had pointed out was plain to see, but from this distance she couldn’t make sense of it. It was a tall, dappled thing, about the size of a larger nicheling but too rounded to be a boulder. It had never been in Kois’ nature to be fearful, but caution, she did understand. She sniffed, thrusting her head out to get a little closer, but she could make out no more than an indistinct sweet smell against the forest’s background scents, and whether it came from the object she couldn’t be sure.

“I’m going to look,” she said. The object was partially obscured by a fallen branch that lay jutting out into the river. The branch had been there some time, long enough to build up dirt and gravel where the river had deposited around it, and thick moss and mushrooms over its surface, as if it was a miniature world of its own. Kois had to wade through the river to get around it, but the water was shallow enough that it only came partway up her legs, and the cooling sensation was welcome in the humid jungle air.

As the object came into view she saw leaves as long as a nicheling’s tail radiating from its base, and she understood. It was a giant blossom. Its petals were closed up into a red and green speckled bud, forming the tall and rounded shape that had puzzled her before. “It’s a plant.”

“Is it dangerous?” There was another splashing sound as Laana followed through the water.

“It’s a plant,” repeated Kois. She stepped closer, her paws sinking into the soft earth, and sniffed at it again. That sweet scent had been coming from the plant after all, and it was quite pleasant now that she was closer, like the tastiest berries. Perhaps there was food inside, but she could see no way of getting to it without tearing the petals apart. When she touched her nose to the plant’s side she found that it was not soft and yielding as she had expected, but stiff – not quite a tree trunk, but not flower-delicate either. She lifted a paw to touch it, trying to fathom the thing out. Its texture was veiny, and she could feel that a good push or tear might open it up, if she put in the effort. “I don’t think it can do anything, but it smells like food inside. So it’s a plant.”

Laana crept closer to the plant, sniffed at it, and jumped back at its unusual texture. “Well maybe,” she said, “but I don’t think I’d like to eat it. It looks like some of Tata’s work to me.”

Maybe it was food, but maybe Laana was right. They were rare, but in a few isolated spots of their home island there grew poison berry bushes in place of the ones Kois and Laana were used to. Their fruits were lumpy black and white things, easy to tell apart from the normal ones, but they smelled good to eat and sometimes a nicheling would take a bite because they hadn’t been told not to touch them. Kois had seen, once before, the after-effects – a new two-gem, who thought she’d found something new and wonderful to feed the tribe,  lying on the ground twitching and screaming in pain. Kois had left to find the bush the young nicheling had eaten from and torn it to pieces after that, ripping it from the ground all the way to the roots so it would never grow back.

The memory brought back a wave of fear – had she taught Yuki not to eat plants he didn’t know? She must have done, sometime on their walks across the island that he always loved. Even if she hadn’t, there were others who must know. Laana had told him to stay close to Meana. Meana would have gotten him to the shore and told him what to do, or Kirro or Iskome. Kois didn’t know them, but she had to believe they were good, sensible nichelings like Laana who would care for him. There was no alternative.

“Yes,” she said, focusing her attention back on the plant. They would need to eat eventually, but they’d had clams and rabbil that morning, so it could wait. She left the plant behind and walked on along the riverbank. The undergrowth seemed thinner around the plant’s base, as if it had taken the goodness from the earth around it, but it soon grew back and Kois and Laana found themselves having to wade through shallow water, splashing over stones and fallen branches. Another unfamiliar bird call rang out, and Kois felt water spray over her side as Laana startled and scrambled backwards into the water.

“Sorry!” Laana waded back out of the water and licked a few stray hairs on her ruff, smoothing them back down. “Everything’s so… different here.”

“I know,” said Kois, thinking of the shore, and the way everything made sense and yet didn’t at the same time – all those wrong colours and plants and sounds. It was no different here. She looked up, to see the tree branches high above festooned in long, purple lianas draped in loops that hung still in the heavy air. Plants on the sky, as well as the ground, and in so many colours…

“I keep thinking about the stories,” Laana went on. “About everything that could be here. I wish I was like you. You don’t have to be afraid of anything.”

Kois stood still and let the river run over her paws and trail around her legs.  Her tail was held low, so that the bone club at the end likewise sank below the rippling surface. The further she walked into this hot and humid world, the more refreshing it felt. But now she lifted one paw, so that it broke the surface and she could feel the water flow through her claws and over her pawpads. When she raised her paw out of the stream, little droplets fell, caught the light, and splashed into the river, each one forming a miniature corona for an eye-blink before vanishing back into the whole. “I am afraid. You know how this place feels. There’s not a sign of anyone here.”

“Yes.” Laana stared off into the distance. “I can’t find words for it. It’s as if the forest is alive – but dead at the same time. Oh, I sound ridiculous… but it _feels_ that way, do you think? Maybe it _is_ because nobody’s here, but… I think there’s something else. I feel like I’m digging for a clam-” she pawed at the riverbed, acting out her words - “and I can smell it down there, but I’m digging and di gging and all I can find is sand.” A crack and a splash rang out across the river as she uprooted and turned a stone, sending up a small water-cloud of river mud in its wake.

“It does,” said Kois, though she supposed Laana’s words would make more sense to another seer. “But I’ve seen that other place too, in the sea. You know the one I mean. It’s real, and I’ve no wish to see it again soon.”

Laana was struck into silence. Neither of them had talked about Kois drowning on the last stretch of their swim, and for the last few days it was as if it had never happened. Nor had Kois felt the need to talk – she had survived, when she could not speak with the same certainty about others. The water that flowed beneath her now was not the water that had tried to claim her, and it was no use acting as if it were.  To speak of it now, it was as if something long forgotten had surfaced between the two of them. But Kois closed her eyes, she could feel the water rising and see dark shapes in the distance…

“I would be there now if not for you,” she said. “So no, I’m not fearless. And you can’t say you’re not brave.” She dipped her head, inviting Laana to press the bridge of her muzzle against her forehead again, so they could nuzzle without catching each other’s horns. Laana seemed hesitant at first, but reciprocated.

“I don’t want to be afraid.” Her voice was a quiet sound by Kois’ ears. “But… we go on?”

“Yes.”

Laana pulled away and looked up at Kois, and for once her ears were perked and her gems were bright, though her posture was still hunched a little in wariness. “Like Nikisha?”

Kois purred, and walked on up the river. “Like Nikisha.”


	11. Scent of Danger

The day wore on. Under the dense canopy, there were no shadows to track time by their length and position, and Kois and Laana could do no more than catch glimpses of the sun overhead and make guesses. Kois walked on, more in the river than out of it by now in an attempt to get out of the humid air that weighed upon her like heavy stones tied to her body. Sometimes she would stop and splash water over her head, and one time she could stand it no more and rolled over in the river, emerging with her coat as dripping and plastered to her body as it had been when she’d hauled herself out of the sea. But each time, the relief was short lived. The air was too damp, and the water had nowhere to go.

Laana took the heat a little better, but she too kept stopping to drink and splash water over her body, all for scant comfort. By their best guesses, it was past noon when she stopped and said “Kois, your gems.”

Kois squinted as she looked down at her chest. Though they were difficult to see behind her the thick fur of her ruff, she could tell at once what had Laana worried. Their deep red colour had grown dull and dark, and even their smooth surfaces seemed to have lost their sheen. It was as if a light that shone from within, like a nicheling’s eyes caught by moonlight on a dark night, had started to die out. “It’s the heat,” she said. “Yours as well.”

Laana must not have noticed. She looked at her own neck, smoothing down her ruff with her nimble paw. Her gems were not as dull as Kois’, but some of the vibrancy had drained away nonetheless. They had always put Kois in the mind of a shining sea under a sunny sky. Now the skies had clouded over, not in the manner of a gathering storm, but enough to block the light and turn the sky cold. “Take a rest,” Laana said. “Don’t let it get worse.”

“I’m just tired,” Kois said, but she didn’t want to pass up Laana’s advice, and sat down by the river, draping her tail through the ferns and grasses behind her. Staring into the water, she scooped up some more with one of her huge paws and splashed it over her face. An instant of cold relief was just that, an instant. “And this does not help,” she said, water dripping off her muzzle. “Well it doesn’t, but I still want to.”

Even her limbs felt too heavy. She sank from her sitting position to lying down and letting her paws trail in the river. Overhead, a small insect buzzed around her ears, and she drove it away with a flick. Laana came to sit by her, curling her tail around her paws in her usual manner.

A dark shape moved under the surface of the water. It was a striped fish, like the clown koi that swam in the rivers back home. In the forest floor’s half-light, Kois and Laana did not cast shadows, so it had no idea of their presence and swam lazily, so close to the surface that Kois could count its orange and black stripes. She was pondering whether to catch it when it vanished with a flick of its tail and a cloud of river mud. As the water settled she saw what had startled it – another fish, but this one she did not recognise. Its scales were red and its body round and flattened sideways. It might have looked comical if not for the sharp white teeth lining its open mouth and its fins, which were fractures and elongated so they looked like insect legs, with each one’s edge sharpened into a blade. The new fish drifted in the water with the leisurely air of a creature so well armed that it knew, even on an instinctual level, that nothing could hurt it. Kois stayed her paw.

Laana had seen it too, and sat crouched, sticking her neck out over the water in that way that meant she wanted a closer look, but didn’t want to come near. “What _is_ that?”

“I don’t know. But it chased away the food.”

“You should still eat something. Maybe you’ll feel better.” Laana sat back up and looked around the shore. “But what _can_ we eat?”

Kois, lacking the energy to say anything intelligent, made a small non-committal sound in her throat. By the sea there had been clams and rabbils, but there were no clams in the river (Laana would surely have found them otherwise) and there was no room to chase prey. The plants might be edible or not, and they would never know. With no tracks to give away the presence of other nichelings, Kois wondered if it was worth turning back.

But she wanted to rest a little longer before getting back up and struggling through the heat, so she stayed where she was and watched the red fish swim lazily upstream. Perhaps its passing would entice the clown koi out of hiding. Its movement drew her gaze up the river and into the distance, where the water continued to cut a gloomy tunnel under the canopy.

She narrowed her eyes. The banks on either side were as impenetrable as always. But just before the river vanished into darkness, she thought she could see a cleared spot, the start of a trail leading away into the deeper jungle. “Laana. Look.”

Laana tried to follow her, but she couldn’t see as well in the dark, although she narrowed her eyes and strained. “No, I don’t see it.”

“Looks like a trail from here. It’s across the river, where it gets dark.”

It might have been no more than a path trodden by grazers when they came to drink, or predators looking for an easy ambush, but nichelings had to drink like everyone else, and the sight of something new and potentially useful sent a new infusion of energy through Kois’ body despite her dulled gems. There was no doubt to either of them that they were going to follow that trail right there and then. They crossed the river, cautious of the red fish, but the water was shallow enough that they could wade through and see what was beneath them.

Kois’ initial judgement had been correct. It was a trail she had seen, leading up the river bank and away into the undergrowth, and just wide enough for them to pass one after the other. She stopped by the shore and sniffed to see who or what had come this way, whilst Laana studied the tracks in the dirt. “Look!” She waved her paw at Kois. “I think they’re nichelings!”

Kois came over for a better look. Nicheling trails could vary a lot, but she knew the most common sort of paws,  and besides the scent that clung to the grass and ferns nearby was undoubtedly nicheling, even if it was nobody she knew and it was mixed in with another smell she did not know and could not put a word to. It had a curious decaying edge, as if someone had left a slab of meat to rot and then dragged it along the ground, but it was so indistinct she could not say if whoever had come down this trail had anything to do with it. The tracks themselves were at least a few days old, so Kois might have missed them if Laana had not been so observant. Perhaps that was what a lifetime of searching for omens did for you.

Despite the age and smell, Kois and Laana didn’t need to say anything to agree they should follow. Kois let Laana take the lead – she was smaller, so Kois would still be able to see where they were going if she walked behind. Laana hesitated at first, but Kois reassured her they would need those observational skills.

The jungle air was no cooler away from the river, but at least there was something new to occupy Kois’ mind besides the crushing heat and other things she did not wish to dwell upon and had locked away in her mind. The trail was well trodden, and the scent of nicheling still present even under the rainforest’s earthy hot water smell and that curious scent of decay. Still, she could not put a word to it. It rose and waned, but was never strong enough to be anything more than a few wisps hanging in the air. There was a little rotten meat, a little of eggs smashed open and left to go bad in the hot sun, but all of it vanished when she thought she could grasp it, like Laana and the buried clam. Whatever it was, it kept running up and down the trail. She guessed it must be some other creature, perhaps one that found smelling unpleasant kept it safe from predators. Certainly she wouldn’t want to chase it.

The trail wound and looped through the forest, avoiding unseen obstacles.  Here and there were patches of light where a tree had fallen and left a hole in the canopy for light to shine through, like the sun streaming into a collapsed cave. In these clearings plant life flourished even thicker than before, everything striving for precious sunlight before the canopy swallowed it back up. Here there grew stands of curious tall grass that, like so many things on this island, seemed familiar and yet foreign at the same time. Dark green stems rose from the ground, growing taller than Kois herself to end in spiral shaped fronds of red and purple. Kois touched some to test its strength, and found it withstood more pressure than its delicate, dreamlike appearance would suggest.

“I feel as though I’m back in the caves,” said Laana.

Kois didn’t have to ask what she meant. The seers of the sea all ventured deep into their sea cave, alone, when they were ready to receive the blessings of Doeli and become true seers. Kois remembered watching her friend disappear down there, and old Silais telling her not to worry. She and Reko had waited by the cave mouth, keeping a respectful distance, and even though they were not seers Silais hadn’t the heart to tell them to leave. After three days Laana emerged, with her gems sparkling blue as the sky, blinking in a light she hadn’t seen in all that time. She had never spoken of what happened down there, and Kois had not pressed her; for all she understood, it was a private thing, not to be shared with others. She sniffed at the fronds – they were sweet, rather like flowers – and wondered what Laana could see in this alien world that brought her back there.

It was slow going, but eventually the path widened out into another fallen-tree clearing, which looked like a sort of meeting place or hub, as several more trails radiated from it. The ground was well trodden, the scent of nichelings stronger, but so was that odd smell of decay. Kois shook her head, trying to clear the heat-induced fog from her mind and focus on where it could be coming from. Laana, meanwhile, crept forward to investigate another strange plant.

Kois moved to get a closer look at what she had found. The clearing felt strangely exposed after the jungle’s close confines, though the open space was only about three times her body length in width and bisected by the fallen, rotting trunk of the tree whose demise had created it. She stepped over the trunk. It had been a true forest giant, and even a nicheling as big as Kois had to scramble over, dislodging bark and moss in her wake. Laana hopped up and down the other side. Her ears were a little flattened as she approached the plant, but she held her head high and her tail straight, trying to be bold.

Kois had thought the giant flower bud at the riverside had been bizarre, but now it looked downright mundane next to this thing, It was some sort of small fruit tree, but its stem was bulbous and bright green, not covered with bark like a proper tree. From its rounded base it rose up as tall as Kois was long, before radiating out into a crown of giant leaves that seemed to peel away from the main stem, each one blending from green at its base before turning a lurid purple, each one tipped with a flower-like structure. But what drew Kois’ attention the most was the fruit. Green and purple stems branched out below the leafy top, each one bearing a round fruit as big as Kois’ head. They were a warm yellow, speckled with white and smoothly textured, and even if she knew to be cautious Kois could not help imagining the tasty flesh that might be inside. She felt a tightness in her stomach and a sharp sensation in her throat, reminding her that she had not eaten since this morning, and the shadows were growing long again.

For once it was Laana who was the first to investigate closer. She sniffed one of the fruits, which was perfectly positioned at her height as if it had grown that way to invite her to pluck it. Immediately she recoiled, hopping backwards with her tail fluffed out and her snout wrinkled in disgust. “Ugh! They’re all rotten!” She rubbed her paw over her nose.

Kois ventured a sniff. It was true – the fruits looked ripe and delicious, but they smelled as if they had been smashed open and left to rot in the sun. Curious, she sliced her claws through the nearest one. Thick, syrupy orange juice dribbled from within, exuding the same sickly rotting-sweet smell. Inside she could see soft golden flesh, and for a moment was torn between the tempting looks and the repulsive scent. She wiped her claws on the grass, trying to brush off the sticky juices.

“Oh Kois, is it not disgusting enough?”

Kois made another non-committal sound. “It’s rotten, but someone’s been here.” Whilst wiping her claws she had seen that there were plenty of tracks around the tree’s base, all overlapping so there was no way of knowing how many nichelings there had been or where they were all going.

“I can see… I suppose they came too late for it as well. Oh, is there nothing in this place we can eat?” Laana hopped back onto the fallen tree trunk, perching up high to get a better view of her surroundings. “But it means someone was here not long ago...” She twined her nimble paw through her ruff. “We could call...”

“And who knows what we’ll attract,” said Kois, still trying, with limited success, to wipe the juice from her claws. No wonder it was all over the trails.

Laana jumped down again. “I suppose you’re-”

She stopped, frozen mid-step. Kois followed her gaze into the grasses. There, watching from one of the trails, was a creature neither of them had seen before. Bigger than a bearyena, covered in shaggy black hair, it sniffed at the air with a long, wrinkled, hairless snout. Kois didn’t know which of them had been taken more by surprise. It made no move to go near them, but she was under no impression that it was safe, “Get behind me,” she said, and Laana obeyed.

The hairy thing flared its nostrils and lumbered closer. Kois growled and raised her tail, swinging it back and forth as she would to ward off a bearyena. The hair of her ruff stood on end and she lowered her head to show off her horns as she dug her claws into the ground. “I don’t know if you can understand me,” she said, “but you will leave us.” She didn’t want a fight – most animals don’t, and a good show of force was usually enough to make even a bearyena reconsider.

Undeterred, the creature moved closer, swinging its head and sniffing all around, and Kois realised her display might be all for nothing – its eyes were small and beady, nearly hidden in the folds of its face. If it wasn’t totally blind, it might not see well enough to notice her threats. Baring her teeth, she growled louder, a deep rumbling that she could feel under her paws as the earth trembled. The creature startled, and for a moment Kois thought it was about to back down.

But instead of vanishing into the grass, it raised one huge fist and swung and Kois with a speed she never imagined possible for such a gigantic beast. The blow caught her in the shoulder and send her crashing into the log. She felt the breath knocked out of her chest as the rotten wood cracked under her impact, and for a moment all she could understand was Laana screaming her name and bewilderment that anything could hurt her.

She stumbled back to her feet, gasping. Bark and dirt fell from her grazed pelt. Immediately she saw what she had dreaded – with the greater threat out of its way, the creature had turned its attention to Laana. It swiped at her, but she was faster and leapt aside.

Kois sprang, tensing all her muscles for one leap onto the thing’s back whilst it was distracted. Her claws scrabbled for purchase on muscles solid as the earth. She growled again, clawing and biting through coarse black hair that smelled of dirt and decay, like everything else around her. Lashing her tail, she yelled at Laana to run, but she had been struck senseless like a stupefied rabbil by the noise. Kois raked her claws through the beast’s flesh, dragging big gouges through its shoulders. It let out a roar of pain and anger, a roar that echoed through the forest, and tried to shake her off, its attention mercifully pulled away from Laana. Her tail slammed into its side, again and again, but it felt like trying to smash rocks.

Unable to throw Kois off, the beast stumbled backwards and tried to reach over its own shoulder to snap at her. Its long jaws latched onto her foreleg and she let out a roar of her own as the flesh tore under its teeth. Her grip loosened and the creature took advantage of her distraction, throwing her to the ground and knocking her senseless and dazed. It was long enough for it to deliver a series of blows from its giant fists. She lashed her tail and claws, but felt a crack and a sharp pain when she tried to breathe, and lay still. Somewhere she could hear Laana shouting, but it was all too distant to resolve into words.

Then the blows stopped and the looming shadow vanished, and Kois lifted her head to see Laana’s slim white form tensed, her head lowered and her antlers pointed at the creature. Kois tried to shout at her to stop, and the pain rose again, snatching away her call and turning it into a strangled gasp. The creature turned its back on her, lumbering back toward Laana. Even with its own blood pouring down its back and matting in its hair, it reminded Kois of the red fish – an animal that knew nothing could cause it any harm. Still Laana didn’t move, though she trembled where she stood, and if she listened hard, Kois could hear her speak to herself through frightened gasps, “… have to make this right… brought this upon you...”

Kois tried to get to her feet – maybe she could push Laana away and make her come to her senses – and then stopped when a wordless shout rang out across the clearing. A third nicheling jumped in, from where Kois did not know, orange fur bristling as she yelled “Hey! Get out! I’ll do it! You know I’ll do it!”

Whatever “it” meant, the newcomer couldn’t possibly match up against this thing. She had no horns, no claws, and when she moved she hopped about on three legs, as if she had lost the fourth to injury. Kois didn’t have time to wonder. The orange nicheling turned so that she was standing with her tail raised and her back to the creature, and a few disgusting possibilities ran through Kois’ mind. The stranger waved her tail, and Kois noticed, in that strange detached away of those too blinded by pain to pay attention to more than the most irrelevant of details, that it was luxuriously fluffy, even without the hairs bristling in every direction.

Kois didn’t see what happened next, but she could smell it. The creature refused to back down, and the newcomer, laughing as though having the time of her life, raised her tail further. In an instant Kois caught wind of a smell so foul that the rotten fruits were a delicious, inviting feast in comparison. It was the scent of carrion and droppings, decaying in the sun and swarming with flies, of eggs left to rot, and it was inescapable, feeling like a thick physical presence that invaded the air as she tried to breathe. She buried her nose under her paw and closed her eyes, feeling them sting and tear up in the scent’s wake, as if it had grown tiny claws that raked at her face.

She could only hear the screech and thuds as the creature reeled from the blast, and feel the ground shake as it retreated into the grass. “Don’t like that, do you? Do you!” The stranger was hopping about on her three legs when Kois finally opened her eyes. Laana crouched nearby, trying and failing not to retch, but there was nothing left in her stomach and she could only heave, her sides shaking and her back arched. The creature had taken the worst of the stench with it, but it clung to the grass and the dirt and lingered in the air itself.

Kois raised her head. “I-” She stopped, the pain returning, and continued with a much quieter voice. “-don’t know what you did. But I think we’re grateful.”

“Yes… grateful.” Laana pawed at her muzzle, backing away from the stranger.

“What did you _think_ I did? I sprayed it! You’ve not got scent glands?” The stranger ran in a circle, chasing her own tail. “You don’t know? Course you don’t know anything! You tried to fight an ape! Who does that? Who fights an _ape?_ ”

“ _That_ was an ape?” Laana said, peering into the distance.

“No, it was a snail. You really don’t know, do you?” The stranger stopped her hopping circle and stood still, staring at Kois. Now that she could finally get a good look at her too, Kois could see that she was not missing a leg at all, but that her right forepaw was shrunken, useless for walking on and held close to her chubby body. Her face was a twisted mess of snaggle teeth and misshapen ears and eyes, and her spotted pelt was the brightest orange Kois had ever seen, like a sunset in full glory. Her two gems, also orange, sparkled with young vitality, reflected in her inability to sit still for a moment before scratching at her odd ears or pacing around with her odd gait. “Thought you had it there, though!” She moved to get a closer look at Kois, perhaps just as puzzled by her appearance as Kois was of hers. “Where’d you come from?”

“Over the sea.” Kois tried to sit up, but the pain flared again and she could feel blood pouring from her foreleg where the ape had bitten. She sank back down, eyes closed. The battle rush was gone, and now she could feel every ebb and rise of pain, all made worse by the smells and the heat that still weighed upon her. She could feel a rising and falling pressure inside her skull with every beat of her heart, and she felt that if she lay here she might well vanish into the fog of heat and decay that permeated her surroundings, leaving her unable to escape. With her jaw clenched tight she sat up. Laana was already by her side, licking the blood away. “Don’t worry.”

“I would,” said the stranger. “It’ll come back eventually and I think I’m all out of spray.” She twisted her body around to try to look at her back end (Kois still didn’t know what she meant, or if she wanted to), coming unbalance on her three functional legs and nearly falling on her side. “If you come with me, I’ll show you somewhere safer.”

“Yes,” said Kois, unwilling to stay no matter who this newcomer was. She had jumped in to save them, and that was all she could bring herself to care about.

“Yes, then?” said Laana, looking up from cleaning away Kois’ blood. “Then I’m Laana. This is Kois. A friend.”

“Good, good,” The stranger hopped toward the nearest path. “I’m Anameis.”


	12. Anameis

Kois didn’t know how long it took for them to follow Anameis through the forest trails. She didn’t try to guess. Her mind felt too clouded by pain, exhaustion, and hunger, and she followed on in the hope that wherever the orange nicheling was taking her, it would be a place to rest.

She couldn’t ask questions even if it didn’t hurt to talk and speak, because Anameis’ mouth was full from carrying along one of the big, smelly fruits they’d investigated before the ape appeared. “Wait!” she’d said, as they were about to leave. “I can’t leave one of those! Look how ripe they are!”

Laana had tried to tell her they were rotten, but Anameis had given her a look that said “which one of us lives here?” without needing to speak a word, and waved her tail at her. She pulled the fruit down by wrapping her good foreleg around it and pulling until she fell to the ground with it landing on top of her while she laughed and got back to her feet.

Now she was holding it in her crooked teeth, carrying it by the stem, and so was in no position to talk. Kois had thought of Anameis as loud before, but now she could appreciate how she moved silently, even with her hopping, three legged gait. Her paws fell lightly upon the ground, and she was careful to avoid twigs or anything else that might make a sound and give her presence away. Compared to her, Kois felt like a lumbering beast, just like the ape they’d left behind.

She had no will to stop, though, and kept going with the same silent but stubborn demeanour that that carried her this far into the jungle, for good or ill. Laana tried to walk beside her to give her something to lean against, but the trail was even narrower than before and they were forced to walk single file again, with Laana looking back again and again as if she feared Kois would vanish without her by her side. Sometimes she and Anameis would stop to let her catch up, as Kois was now walking on three legs, holding her right foreleg up so as not to put weight on the flesh torn by the ape’s teeth. But she remained determined not to stop, pushing onward through fog and heat and pain. She’d worry about the rest later. Anameis knew where she was going, and that, for the moment, was all she needed.

The path rose steadily and then descended again, and in the distance Kois could hear running water. Had they returned to the river? She felt a dry ache in her throat, a yearning for fresh, cool water, and that thought was enough to spur her on. _As Nikisha would,_ she thought, but she had little energy left to think any more of Nikisha, or anything beyond taking one more step.

She didn’t see their destination at first. She walked on with her head held low and both Laana and Anameis ahead of her, even if she was taller than the pair of them. All she could see at first was a break in the grass before Anameis hopped ahead and dropped the fruit, yelling “Welcome home! Drop down wherever you want. It’s what I do.” As if to demonstrate she rolled over, kicking her three good paws in the air.

Laana crept forward first, letting Kois follow. They had caught wind of a few stronger hints of Anameis’ scent close by. Territory markers, Kois surmised, though they were mercifully nowhere near the full spray’s potency. She could see now that they had been led to another clearing, though smaller than before, about as long as Kois if she stretched out her tail. At one end a fallen tree had ripped open a hole in the ground, tearing it apart and creating a small den in the hollow its roots left behind. Beside it ran a stream, small enough that Kois could easily step over it, but water all the same – fast flowing, fresh water. She did not hesitate to step past Laana and drink her fill, ignoring the others as she swallowed.

When she was done she let herself lay down at last. She sprawled her body out, trying to shed the heat that kept weighing down upon her. Closing her eyes, she felt a dizzy, drifting sensation inside her skull, as if she was falling and turning in unseen space. Her paws brushed against stones, small grassy clumps, and debris left behind – fruit stems and splintered prey bones. She pushed them aside. “Thank you,” she said. “You are very kind.”

“Don’t go spreading that about,” Anameis said. Kois could hear her scratching again.

Then she felt pressure at her side – Laana, come to sit by her. “Kois, are you – no, let me get that.” She began to lick at the wound on Kois’ foreleg, teasing out the dirt. Kois felt fresh waves of pain as it began to bleed again, but let out an appreciating rumble in her throat.

Anameis moved as silently as always, so Kois’ ear twitched in surprise and she opened her eyes when she spoke. “Ugh. That looks bad.” She was leaning over Kois’ side to get a better look. Laana bent her head, showing off her sharp antlers again in response to her coming too close. Anameis ignored her, but she did back off. “Wait here a while. I know what’ll help.” She didn’t wait for Kois and Laana’s approval, just turned and hopped back the way she came.

“Thank you,” said Kois, and then, “...I think.”

“What was that all about?” said Laana.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” There were many scenarios that might explain Anameis’ sudden departure, but she put them out of her mind. There would be no sense in worrying now. She let her breathing go shallow again, to keep the pain tolerable. Speaking felt like claws tearing through her ribs.

“How are you?” Laana went back to cleaning the wound, licking it until the bleeding started to subside.

“Hot.” Another moment or two, to catch her breath. “Hurts to talk.”

“Oh,” Laana said. She pulled away and sniffed at Kois’ side, careful not to touch. “Your ribs… they must have been hurt when it hit you.” She ran her claws through her ruff again and let her paw come to rest on her central gem. “What can I-”

“Stay here, please.”

“Oh… of course.” Laana didn’t ask any more questions. Perhaps she didn’t want to burden Kois with making her talk any more. Instead she settled beside her, tucking her paws into her ruff. She kept her ears perked and her eyes open for danger – she, too, must have had the same thoughts as Kois regarding Anameis’ motivations, but she was not Kois, and could not put them out of her mind so easily. Her body felt stiff and tense by Kois’ side, not like the morning before their journey, when she had fallen asleep beside her, Yuki nestled between them. There, with that memory rising, the worst of all of this struck Kois, that she could not carry on the search. Her memories of that peaceful moment dissolved into the last time she had seen Yuki, shivering by her feet yet reaching up to her gems. _He’ll make it. He’s Yuki._ And she had to keep in believing that.

She wanted to purr, to tell herself and Laana all could still be well, but it sent fresh waves of pain through her ribs. Instead she lifted her head, ignored the dizziness, and nuzzled Laana’s ruff. Her fur was as soft and smooth as always, and it tickled her nose. Feeling Laana lean in to the touch, she gave her a lick, before settling back down to rest. Laana stayed alert, but Kois could feel her body relax with a small but perceptible loosening of previously tense muscles.

Kois closed her eyes again, and drifted off into a half asleep stage. Once again she felt herself falling, over and over, inside her head. With each pulse of blood through her body she began to doze off, too exhausted to care about pain.

She didn’t know how long she stayed in that world between sleep and wakefulness, but it was still daylight when she felt Laana nudge her in the shoulder and opened her eyes to see her point her antlers at a rustle in the grass. But it was only Anameis returning, with what looked like a clump of dark green leaves dangling from her mouth. Laana stretched out to see what it was, and Anameis dropped it in front of Kois and nudged it closer with her nose. “Here you go! This’ll fix you up!”

Laana sniffed at the thing. “What is it?” Kois took a sniff too – it wasn’t rotten, at least, but quite sharp and mildly acidic in scent on top of the sweetness. From its smell and a closer look she could see that it was not a leaf bud but a fruit wrapped up in its stem. Inside its body was a warm yellow-orange, made up of many small repeating clusters.

“It’s a healing fruit. Helps with the pain, fixes you up faster. How do you all keep going where you’re from if you don’t have these?”

“We don’t have apes,” said Kois.

“That’s fair. Look, it’s safe.” Anameis sat down and pulled one of the leaves with her shrunken paw for Kois and Laana to see. “You’re lucky the tribe hadn’t taken this one! They’re always looking for these.” She stepped away to give them space and started batting a half chewed rabbil bone around the clearing.

Whatever this plant was, Kois recalled yet again that it had been a long time since morning, and took a bite. She chewed slowly, taking in the taste – she had never eaten anything like this before, with its sharp, tangy flavour, but it was surprisingly pleasant. The little clusters that formed the main body burst open between her teeth and released little seeds that kept getting stuck in there, but she did not mind and ate the whole thing, seeds and all, until she was left licking the juices from the central stem that was all that was left of it. As she ate she listened to Laana and Anameis speak, Laana putting a voice to same questions that were inside her own mind.

“There is a tribe here?” said Laana.

“Course there’s a tribe, where did you think I came from?” Anameis crouched and pounced on the bones.

“Oh… where are they?” Laana reared up on her hind legs, looking for any other signs of life.

“Around. Not here, anyway. I could take you if you really wanted to go.” Anameis stopped playing with the bone and lay down, her good paw stretched out and scuffing at the dirt. “You think I’m making them up? We’re the Taimera Tribe. Over that direction.” She pointed her head, facing the way she’d come. “They won’t eat you. My promise.”

“Thank you,” said Kois, “but I think we’ve all travelled far enough today.” She stretched back out. Perhaps she was imagining things, but the pounding sensation in her skull seemed to have subsided, the pain in her body growing a little more tolerable- not gone, but manageable. Even breathing felt easier. She dug her tongue into a crevasse in her teeth, working free another stuck pip.

Anameis, meanwhile, had already found a new topic to jump onto. “That’s fair. You don’t want to eat this?” She pushed the big, smelly fruit with her nose. Kois had forgotten about it – it had been lying there since they reached the den and Anameis left it there.

“But it smells-” Laana began.

“-just right!” interrupted Anameis. “If you don’t want it, I’ll eat it!” She took a big bite out of the fruit, chewing away and making satisfied noises while the thick juice ran down her jaw. She licked it away and took another bite. It was not, Kois had to admit, a pleasant sight, but she supposed she could not complain after all Anameis had done for them. “It doesn’t taste like it smells!” She paused in her munching to lick a few stray fragments that had fallen into her ruff. “You sure you don’t want some?”

“No, thank you,” said Laana.

“Suit yourself.” Another big bite. “You’ff know? Y’mind me of theff nifflings I’ff been seeing abouff.” Anameis swallowed. “They your friends?”

Kois perked her ears, and Laana jumped to her feet. “There are other nichelings here?” Laana reared up again, trying to see over the tall grass as if they were all hidden in there. “Where are they? Why didn’t you say?”

“Nobody’s here! Nobody comes here!” Anameis laughed and rolled onto her back, kicking her hind legs in the air. “This is _my_ den, remember? But I’ve seen a few strangers around Tamera’s camp.” She stopped moving and lay with her head on one side, against the ground. Her left eye, shrunken and usually staring off in a different direction to the other, was for once focused on Laana. “Come to think of it, some of them looked a little like you.”

“ _Yuki..._ ” Laana whispered. “Can you take us there? To your tribe?” She leaned over where Anameis lay, making the orange nicheling roll away and get back on her feet.

“Into Taimera camp? Can do that for you.” Anameis shook the dirt from her back and tail. “You’re wanting to go now?”

“Yes, of course, of course!” Laana took a deep breath and touched her antlers, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them her voice was calm again. “Oh but… Kois?”

“If I need to, I’ll come along.” Kois ran her claws through the dirt. She had no doubts; the news that Yuki and the explorers might not only be alive, but _safe_ , sent a second wind through her body that diminished all pain even more than Anameis’ fruit. If she must walk again, then she would do so.

“I don’t know,” Anameis’ ears drooped. “You go out there, the apes are going to smell blood. They’re good at that. But I’ve got scent markers all over the place here! They’ll never smell you if you stay where you are.” She scratched again. “I don’t _mind_ you here. I wouldn’t have brought you if I did.”

Kois looked at her claws and the deep furrows they tore in the ground. She thought back to a time before her own, when two nichelings fled burning lands to find shelter in the meadow. Perhaps this was her turn, and if so, she could not turn away Anameis’ kindness. No matter what her motivations, thoughts, and habits might be, Kois understood she showed the same mercy that her home tribe had shown her parents, long ago. It was mercy that might be in short supply across the world. She bowed her head in gratitude. “Then I will take your advice. Laana, you should go with Anameis.”

“Is it far?” said Laana.

“No,” said Anameis, “but we should go now if you want to be back by dusk. And you’re going to have to tell Ki-Roku who you are.” Seeing the confused look on Laana’s face, she went on. “Don’t worry about him! He’s far enough – never said a bad word about _me,_ anyway.” She patted her chest with her shrunken paw. “You coming?”

“One moment,” said Laana, and Anameis let her have it without a word. Kois looked up as Laana approached her, she bent her head so that, once again, Laana could press the bridge of her muzzle between Kois’ horns. Their scents intermingled, each taking away a small part of the other as they parted. “Doeli be with you,” Laana murmured, in a voice that was for Kois’ ears alone.

Kois purred. “And Yuki with you.”


	13. The Tribe of Taimera

Anameis stopped and reared up onto her haunches, craning her neck to look over the curled fronds that surrounded her. Her ears swivelled and her nose twitched. Laana could hear nothing, but she let Anameis check anyway. Nonetheless she scuffed at the ground with her paw. Normally she would have praised her guide’s caution, but knowing what she now did, she could not help but feel that Anameis was dragging things out.

Anameis herself had been frustratingly vague. “I said I saw them about. I didn’t _talk_ to any of them, why’d I do that?” she had said, when Laana pressed her for more details. Laana had to concede that she was telling the truth, now that she could tell Anameis’ tribe must exist. The trails were wider here, so that the two of them could walk side by side. By her feet Laana saw nicheling tracks, many of them the same sort of small, light, circular  paw-prints that Anameis herself left behind. It was these trails and scents that she studied intently every time Anameis stopped, but still she could find no sign of anyone she knew. They were all too old or faint or mixed in with a whole tribe’s worth of nichelings to tell any one individual apart. All she knew for certain was that the path was slowly leading them downhill.

With the going so slow, Laana was left alone to her thoughts. She twined her claws through her antlers, trying to avoid the most damning. She already knew she had failed; she could not listen to them again and again. Anameis had given her another chance. So she forced her thoughts away from failure, but, fearing to hope, she began to recall the first time she had laid eyes on Yuki.

  


She couldn’t face the seers the night after Reko’s passing. So she had crouched out in the open, above the cliffs, trusting to the tall grass to keep her safe and hidden. Above her the stunted clifftop trees reached out, bent by the persistent sea winds. Their branches cut dark claws over the night sky, until the sun set and the world turned into a lightless place, one defined by sound and smell. Here Laana lay still, eventually drifting into sleep only to wake with the sky still dark and the memories of the previous day all too fresh in her mind. She kept still, feeling the windblown grass brush against her sides, and awaited the dawn, unable to sleep again.

In the first of the pre-dawn light, as the stars began to fade and a glow of pale light made its presence felt over the sea, she got to her feet and stretched, easing the stiffness from her body. In that moment, watching the glimmer of distant waves over an endless sea, she confronted for the first time in her life the notion that she would not live out her life on the island of her birth. The child had seen to that, him and Kois with her prophecies. She sat back down, curling her tail around her paws to keep them warm. Kois would know what to do, just like yesterday when Laana had not been able to speak the right words to return Reko to the sea.

A gleam of sunlight on the far-away horizon brought her attention back to here and now, Below, the tide had begun its morning recession, leaving wet sand that shone gold in the new day’s light. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. She was the bearer of Doeli’s gifts, given to her so that she could guide the tribe and warn them of the future, and yet the sea had said nothing to her about this. Why had it not warned her? She felt herself overcome, imagining alternate paths she could have taken if she had known better, fetching help for Reko so that she could live. Her head was heavy, her body pained with the lack of sleep, but she knew it would not come.

It was not long before it was light enough to travel without fear of bearyenas, even if those where the last thing on Laana’s mind. She thought of Kois again – her calmness, her strength, her understanding. Her first instinct then was to find her friend and let her tell her what to do, while she buried her nose in the thick fur of her ruff. She stood up, facing away from the dawn and into the rolling hills inland. But though she pictured herself finding Kois by her nest and letting her take charge, she stayed where she was. They had been close friends all their lives, but they walked different paths, and told different stories. Kois had seen her tribe’s oldest deity become flesh again. Had Doeli herself been reborn into the world, would Laana and the other seers have time for anything else? No. Laana’s whiskers twitched. She _wanted_ Kois’ comfort and direction, wanted to press up against her big, strong form and close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening, and her wants were selfish.

She took a deep breath, inhaling fresh, cold, salt-tinged air. She bore Doeli’s gifts. She should put them to use.

So she walked along the clifftop, stopping to nibble at a stunted berry bush. Eating felt like too much effort, but she supposed she should even if she could not enjoy the taste. Her path took her down a lonely stretch of coastline, where the trails were narrow and overgrown, and the tribe’s scent a mere hint against the sea and the tough, windswept grass. She wanted to keep on walking, with no destination in mind and nothing to do but keep moving, to feel the exertion in her muscles, the ground under her paws, and the wind ruffling her coat.

But she knew where she was headed. A small, nameless bay opened up beneath the cliffs. The seers rarely used it, despite its sheltered location. It was too difficult to scramble up and down the steeper cliffs here for them to make a habit of it, and there were no caves to sleep in. Only one steep, rocky trail remained to show that on occasion, someone might come by, stay and watch the sea for a while, and then leave.

It was down this trail that Laana picked her way, head first. When she reached the sand, she left a lone trail of prints on an untouched shore. She listened to the crash of waves, breathing in air rich with the scent of seaweed. In this sheltered bay there was no wind to ruffle her fur and cut through her body. She was at once before the open ocean and sealed away in her own world. Here there was only the sound of breaking waves, and she let it take her with them, as if those waves could wash away her thoughts as they beat upon the sand, scouring them clean and leaving only seafoam behind. For a fleeting moment she felt that she had gone beyond, watching light dance upon the sea, breaking apart and reforming in endless, never repeating patterns.

She touched her paw to her gems, and let herself focus on their smooth surface and the soft fur they nestled within, and she was back upon the shore, no longer lost in the waves.

Laana knew Reko would not want to be returned to the sea, as the seers did with their dead. She remembered once, long ago, a well meaning sort of nicheling asking Reko if she was disappointed to not be born a seer like her little sister, and Reko had flashed her claws and laughed. Nobody ever asked her again. Maybe, then, this was the wrong place to be. But the sea went on forever. It covered the world, its depths were endless, and it was all Laana knew.

_You are wasting time,_ she thought, as she sniffed at the sand in search of buried clams.  _You will need to go back eventually._ But not now. She found a shell by scent and pulled it free from the wet sand.

_Great sea, where all rivers flow,_ she thought as she pried it open.  _I don’t know why you chose not to warn me. I don’t know what you want of me. But If you can send me a message, then I will follow it with all my strength._ The sea did not give what you asked for; it gave what it deemed you should hear. But whatever it had to say, she would listen. She let her focus shift from her questions to the shell in her paws – the gritty texture of sand caught in its ridges, the gleam of light and subtle interplay of golden shades on its surface. They brought her back to the world, grounding her in the familiar and giving her something to concentrate on.

Her claws levered the shell open, and she sat back to examine the contents. As always she studied them with a careful eye, taking her time and letting the meanings come to her. There was much to consider. The signs were many – she may find meaning in the colour and texture of the shell or its meat, the way water ran free when she opened it, even its scent and flavour. All of these she had learnt and memorised. She let herself slip into a calm trance, feeling the meaning out as she might sniff at a trail and study the footprints left behind to see who had passed by.

_Redemption. Great heights. Flourishing greenery – a pool turned to grass, blue becoming green. The great bird-_ and that last one sent a stab of guilt through Laana’s chest, shocking her out of her reading as she pawed at her antlers, trying to shake away the thought of a tiny white body gripped in talons, flying away and out of reach. “No!”

Her voice echoed back and forth from the cliffs, returning to her over and over again. She flattened her ears and crouched to the sand, trying to make herself small, wishing the waves would wash over her so nobody could see. As the pounding of her heart faded, as she touched her gems and reminded herself there was no bird now, that the message might not mean a real bird, she thought again of Reko’s child. Not being carried away in talons… she shook her head again, wishing the thought would leave her alone, but curled up with his mother, where he should be, if things had been different.

She dug into the sand, watching water fill the holes she made. She hated the child, did she not? He had taken Reko away from her. How else could she feel?

But Reko, no matter how Laana felt, had wanted this child. She had been taken by surprise at first, but had soon become excited at the prospect of being a mother, and Laana was reminded that it was not only her who had lost something dear to her. Reko would never get to experience that now. Laana closed her eyes. Reko would never have wanted her to hate her child. What if Laana had been given a message, and warned her? Then surely Reko would have told her to love him in her place.

She wanted to burrow into the sand and sink into its cold depths. Reko would have trusted her, and in return Laana had hoped, deep down, that the bird would take her child so she would never have to deal with his existence.  Now the sea had put that thought in her head – and it wouldn’t  _go away_ – and Laana knew she did not have it in her to hate him. The shame burned deep within.

_Very well then,_ she thought, and got to her feet. Immediately she noticed something that had been missing all day. After all the hard work of yesterday her antlers had been left bare, and she was missing the familiar seaweed drapes. She hadn’t cared to notice before, but now the sea had shown her a clear and shining path she felt exposed, as though her pelt had begin to shed in great ugly clumps. She took some seaweed from the tideline, close to where she had dug up her clan, and would the green strands around her tines. When she was done she turned and climbed the path out of the bay, leaving the clam for the birds to peck clean.

She retraced her steps back from the lonely overgrown tracks and to the familiar sights and sounds of home. Sunrise Cove’s sands were peppered with white as the seers combed the sands and talked among themselves. Laana couldn’t put the moment off any longer, no matter how much she yearned to turn back into the untrodden grasses. She walked across the sands in a straight line toward the sea cave, never looking away even when the others looked up and asked where she had been. “Not now,” she said.

The tide was high and the cave mouth partially flooded, and she was forced to wave into its depths. With each step she lifted her paws from the cold, sandy water, trying to shake away the nasty, cold sensation. At least here the sights and sounds of the outside world were hidden away. She didn’t have to imagine the tribe’s eyes upon her, waiting to see what she would do.

But Silais’ were. The old nicheling was waiting inside, where the water gave way to sand and then to the rocky slope where the seers built their nests. She was curled up inside one of them, yellow eyes watching Laana approach. Silais knew her charges, and she did not need the sea to tell her what they would do.

“Silais.” Laana lowered her head. “I’ve returned.”

“Come on in out of the water, then”

Laana waded out onto the damp sand and shook out each of her paws in turn. She licked them clean of salt and sand, aware she was putting off the moment, but at least she wouldn’t have to feel cold and dirty when it came. Silais stayed where she was, curled up around something Laana couldn’t see but didn’t need to guess at.

Finally, she approached the nest. Silais uncurled herself a little, so Laana could see.

If it were not for Reko’s memory and the sea’s signs, she would have turned away, but for her sister’s sake Laana forced herself to look. Her only experience with cubs was seeing one-gems race through the meadow – never had she seen a nicheling so small, like a rabbil snuggled up against the older seer’s side. There was not a single gem on his chest, and his eyes were still closed tight. For a moment it was all Laana could do to look at him and tell herself this was the way things were now. They both needed Reko, and Reko was gone. With that thought she stroked the top of his head, feeling fur as soft as rabbil down under her paw. He stirred and lifted his head, nuzzling against her touch.

“Kois told you, did she?” said Silais.

“About Yuki? Yes, she did.” _I suppose that is his name now,_ she thought, as the tiny cub waved a paw in the air, trying to find her warmth again. She held out her paw and he turned, pink nose twitching. It wasn’t the name Reko had chosen, but she supposed they would all have to defer to Kois’ stories. “I suppose I will not be staying here, then.”

“I know,” said Silais.

After all, there was nothing you could keep from an old seer.

  


Anameis stopped again. Laana peered over her shoulder, but the trail carried away and out of sight, through another stand of purple fringed grass. She could hear something moving in the distance, but underneath the calling birds and droning insects that permeated the jungle soundscape, she couldn’t tell who or what it might be. Anameis didn’t look alarmed, and quickly dropped down onto her three good legs.

Perhaps it was another nicheling? The trails here were wide and well trodden. They smelled a little like home – not the home she knew, but the scents and trails of creatures past and present overlaid one another, like near-tangible memories. Not her home, but home to many others. Yet there were no open spaces or gathering spots. Walking these trails she thought of a rabbil’s warren, its tunnels hemmed in not by earth but undergrowth and the forest canopy. Her curiosity was confirmed when Anameis waved her tail to signal Laana to follow and said: “Come on, it’s only Vankirvan.”

She ran forward, and Laana caught up as they rounded the corner to see a creature – but it couldn’t possibly be a nicheling, Laana thought, in the fleeting moment before Anameis yelled “Vankirvan! Get out of your plants!”

The creature let out a yelp of surprise and turned, coat bristling, and Laana saw that he  _was_ a nicheling – there could be no denying the two green gems set in his chest, with room for a third. But if Laana had thought Anameis looked unusual, she was downright mundane compared to her tribemate. His fur was even greener than his gems, bright as a new leaf, and his muzzle was round and shorter than any Laana had seen, bristling with long whiskers that twitched in irritation at being interrupted.  Clasped in his nimble paws was a deep pink berry, and a pile of the same stood beside him at the foot of a berry bush, such a normal sight that looked even stranger next to the green nicheling.

“Why did you-” he began, and then put down the berry, licking his paw and smoothing down his yellow mane. Spots of a similar colour were dappled over his back, like sunlight on a leaf. “Oh. It’s _you._ ”

“Can’t be rid of me.” Anameis sniffed at the berry pile. “Seen Ki-Roku?”

“If you’re planning to annoy him, he’s probably in the cave.” Vankirvan glared at Anameis as she plucked a berry from the pile. “ _My berries!_ Pick your own!”

“But you’re so good at it!” Anameis waved her tail at Vankirvan’s paws, and dropped the berry by Laana’s feet. “Here. Don’t worry about him.”

“Oh, of _course._ ” Vankirvan turned his attention to Laana. “My apologies. _Someone_ has taken it upon herself to _annoy_ everyone.” He tapped his gems, by way of greeting. “Vankirvan.”

“Laana.” She ignored both the fruit and whatever rivalry these two had, and sniffed the berry. It was the first familiar food she had found in the jungle, and once again she remembered how long it had been since morning. Even under the canopy she could feel the heat starting to fade, the light dwindling too and telling her that evening was on its way. She looked back over her shoulder. Anameis had told her they’d be back with Kois by dusk…

“Are you from the Meadow Tribe?” Vankirvan said. He’d turned his back on both of them, going back to his berry picking, but his ears were swivelled backwards in their direction.

“Meadow Tribe? No, I...” Laana stopped, her thoughts overtaking her words. Her home tribe had never had a name to call themselves by. They had only been “the tribe” - in generations they had never needed to introduce themselves to another, only the occasional wanderer. It would be like trying to name the sky. “Are there others here?” She darted to Vankirvan’s side.

“Who like getting in my way? Sometimes. You’re nearly as bad as Little Roku, he kept wandering under my paws too! What are you, his mother?” He looked over Laana again. “You _look_ like him.”

“Why would I be-” Laana stopped again. The name _Roku_ had tugged at her memory ever since Anameis had mentioned it, and now she knew why. It was the name Reko had chosen for Yuki, before Kois’ legends had overturned it. Had she ever told him that, on those long days when she told stories for him about his mother? She touched Vankirvan’s shoulder. “He’s here? Is he-”

“Hold on!” Anameis trotted up to them. “Nobody told me about any Rokus apart from Ki-Roku!”

“No, Little Roku!” Vankirvan said. “He looks just like her! Apart from the horns… and you don’t have those funny red eyes!”

He spoke those last words to Laana, and had she been in any other situation, she would have thought that commenting on someone having red eyes was a strange thing for someone with a lurid green pelt. Instead she felt the grip of urgency – was this Little Roku really Yuki? And was he safe? What about the others? “Where is he? What happened to him?” Her claws tightened around Vankirvan’s coarse fur.

“Do you  _ normally _ grab onto people?” said Vankirvan.

Laana let go, and was about to apologise when they were both interrupted by Anameis pushing them apart with her twisted snout and reaching to grab another berry. Vankirvan shrieked and swatted her away, and she fell over laughing with her tail in the air. Laana rubbed her antlers, trying to calm her nerves. They were just two-gems playing. She’d been a two-gem not long ago… though  _ great Doeli, _ she had never been  _ this _ irresponsible, surely? “Please. Can you tell me where he is?”

“ I don’t know. He’s been with Ki-Roku.” Vankirvan glared at Anameis, who was slowly moving her snout into the bushes again in a parody of stealth, ears pricked in amusement. “ _ Anameis! _ ” He swatted her away again, waving his paws at her. “Go! Go go  _ go! _ And  _ leave my plants alone! _ ”

“ And that was Vankirvan,” Anameis said, as she led Laana further down the trail. “He’s my friend!”

Laana supposed that explained everything, but in truth she didn’t care – all she wanted was to know where Yuki was. But Anameis knew no more, so Vankirvan’s words were all they had to hold onto. She didn’t want to hope, even if she had never seen another nicheling with red eyes. What were red eyes to a tribe with green fur?  _ Bright poisonous coats, _ she thought, remembering the story of Tata and Eve’s gifts. She’d always wondered what that meant.

Ahead she could smell water and damp earth, for Anameis had led her back to the river. It was a little wider here, but still small enough to swim across or cross over the algae-tinted stones strewn through its depths, and its bank were well trodden. Here there were nichelings, watching them pass, and whilst some had black or brown coats such as she had seen back home, others were bright like Vankirvan and Anameis – orange and green, but also blues and yellows and vivid magenta, like the ripest of berries. They looked up to watch at the two of them passing by, but none of them greeted her or her guide. They were curious, but nor alarmed, bodies stretched out and tails waving slowly as they went about their day. Instead they fished, or drank from the river, or sat around in small groups telling stories, playing with cubs, or dozing.

Anameis herself had stopped sniffing around and checking for danger every few steps, and was moving forward in silence, not bothering to talk with anyone else. Laana kept looking around for signs of a cave, like the one Vankirvan had talked about. She didn’t understand how a cave could be here, with no sea to carve it out, but then she saw what he meant.

Ahead, in the low light, she could see the land rise up into a cliff, about five nichelings tall, exposing bare white stone at its sides with enough crags and footholds that a determined creature could climb it, if they knew how. Following the river with her eyes she now saw the cave, from which the waters flowed, milky with the tint of white stone that swirled and mingled upon its surface. Mossy stones made a walkway into the cave depths, through a mouth strewn with ferns and vines, draping greenery across its entrance. To Laana it was a distant reminder of home, but, as the beach had been for Kois, all the stranger for its familiarity.

Anameis moved slowly over the rocks, struggling to keep her balance, but she pressed on and didn’t lean on Laana’s side, even though she walked beside her in an attempt to help. “Here you go,” she said.

“May we go inside?” said Laana. Peering inside the entrance she could see light in the distance – but how could that be? What could bring the sun inside a cave? She was still puzzling it out when she heard someone speak beside her.

“Who is this?”

It was a quiet voice, soft as clouds, and when Laana turned to see who was there (trying not to look too startled) she saw that it belonged to a tall nicheling with a coat blue as the sea on a clear day. Curled white horns framed a long face, and at her chest sat three shining green gems. Her pelt was perfectly groomed, smooth and elegant. Her paws made no sound as she walked even on slippery rocks, as surefooted as she was silent.

Laana waited for Anameis to introduce her, but the orange nicheling seemed to have lost all her bravado, and so Laana dripped her head, assuming this must be someone worthy of respect. “I am Laana, of the Meadow Tribe.”

“I am Ai-Relare,” said the blue nicheling, proving Laana’s hunch right.  _ Ai- _ denoted a relationship to a leader, and so she might be speaking to a relative of this Ki-Roku she was to meet – a mate, or sibling, or child. “But you… you are Laana.”  Ai- Relare gazed off into the cave depths, waving her tail at Laana to follow. It was as long and luxurious as Anameis’, dappled with black spots and meticulously groomed. “Little Roku’s aunt?”  Her voice echoed in the cave entrance, raising it above a whisper. “You are?”

“Yes, yes I am!” It had to be him – she still did not let herself dare hope, but it must be him. Did Ai-Relare believe her? “He has white fur like me… one pink gem, red eyes...”

Ai-Relare waved her tail again. Anameis nudged Laana out of her frozen surprise and into the cave.

The sound of flowing water filled the tunnel as they walked on over smooth rocks. Laana’s surroundings grew comfortably dim, reminiscent of home, but her first impressions had been right. There was indeed light ahead of her, in defiance of all sense, and now she could see where it came from. It flowed from a still lake within a cavernous space, and whilst normally she would have trusted the flow of air over her whiskers to tell her this, here she could see. A portion of the ceiling had caved in long ago, letting in shafts of light and greenery. Moss and ferns spilled into the cavern and down its walls, and even a few pink flowers bloomed within the cave. Terraced layers of stone, worn smooth by water over more years than anyone could count, led down to a wide, flat lake shore. Here there were nichelings too, talking and grooming over piles of fruit. Some where brightly patterned strangers, but others, she knew.

“Laana?” Kirro sniffed at a nearby berry pile he’d been eating from. “Did I eat something wrong or is that you?”

“It  _ is _ Laana!” said Meana, who sat by him. And all around nichelings looked up, calling her name – Kirro, Meana, Tanu, the young twins…

And at last, she saw him. There on the highest terrace, ferns and flowers draped behind him, sat a golden nicheling speckled with black spots. He was a stranger, but Laana saw a flash of white – a cub playing and climbing on his back, just as he had with Kois. White fur, a pink gem at his chest, and shining red eyes.

She forced herself not to call out his name, but he had already seen her, and with a cry of “Laana!” he leapt from the golden nicheling’s back and down the terraces, to where she waited by the lake.

_ Yuki… _ She curled her nimble paw around his body, drawing him close. Her nose touched his head, breathing in his scent, the way his soft tuft of a mane tickled, everything she had known and remembered. He nuzzled her gems, as reluctant to let go as she was of him, and gradually their little cries of happiness gave way to soft purring. She would never leave him again. Her baby was safe, alive, and she knew there was nothing she could do as long as she lived that would allow her to return the Taimera Tribe for bringing him back. “Anameis, Ai-Relare… thank you.”

“Look.” Yuki was still nestled in her fur. “There’s no bluebirds this time!”

“No.” Laana looked up at the cavern’s ceiling, smooth and shaded with whites and greys, like clouds before the rain. “There are not.” Her gaze settled back upon the golden nicheling that Yuki had been playing with. “Ki-Roku?”

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“Thank you.” Laana nuzzled Yuki’s rabbil-soft fur. “All of you… thank you, so much.”


	14. Roku and Roku

The sea drowned out the whole world. Foam and salt in his mouth and nose, stinging his eyes. Only white spray and dark waters filled his vision, no land or sky in sight. But Meana pushed him onward, nudging him back to the surface when he began to sink, pushing his head above water. With quick gasps for breath, Yuki stumbled out of the water and onto sandy shores, legs shaking, unable to hold up his body’s sudden weight.

Rain lashed down, as if the sky were trying to battle the sea. Yuki shivered, and felt a nudge at his side. Meana again, watching over him, before she turned and dove back into the water. “Meana!” But over the rain and wind, she couldn’t hear his voice.

“Come on!” Tanu, who had been following, pushed him with his nose, up the beach and away from the breaking waves. Yuki stumbled but let Tanu guide him. Squinting, his eyes made out a dark barrier ahead where the first trees grew. Behind, Meana was a tan blur in the water, guiding others to shore. One by one that staggered to land, licking one another, or lying flat out on the sand, unable to move another step but filled with relief to have found firm sand under their paws. Tanu moved on to the trees, looking for shelter, but Yuki stayed back, counting them all. “Kois? Laana?” But there was nobody left to climb out of the raging sea.

He didn’t care about the cold, or the rain battering his body, or the way his limbs wouldn’t move and he was forced to stumble and flop over the sands. “Kois! Laana!”

Meana was by his side again, ready to jump back in, but she hesitated.

“They’re gone!” Tanu turned away and skulked off to the trees. Meana, resigned, followed him. He was right. There was nobody out there for Meana to save. They were calling his name, trying to make him turn back, but he couldn’t force himself to look away. Seafoam whipped at his feet. The waves threatened to pull him back into the depths. His breath was fast and shallow, as if the rain itself could drown him.

Someone nuzzled him, warm against the cold – Kirro, the lanky almost-seer. “Sorry,” he said. “Come on back.”

Yuki’s ears fell and his tail dragged in the sand as he turned and let Kirro guide him up the beach. Maybe that was where Kois and Laana had gone. Maybe they’d be waiting, safe and warm.

Wind and rain lashed ferns and leaves through the air, whipping at his sides as he entered the forest and felt darkness close in over him. Sand turned to mud under his paws, churned with fallen leaves and debris.

Someone had found a hollow under a wide thorny bush, enough to keep out the worst of the rain, and they huddled together underneath, curled up and dazed. But still, Kois and Laana were not there.

“We couldn’t find them,” said Kirro.”

“I’m sorry.” Meana licked the top of his mane. “They said to stay with you.”

Yuki said nothing. He couldn’t cry out. They needed him, they had followed him here, and gods did not falter. He buried his face in his paws and huddled down in the mud by Meana’s side. Rain drummed the leaves above, washing away his throughts. Too exhausted to move any more, he slipped into a deep sleep as the storm carried on overhead, beyond any power but its own.

  


He had a moment of cloudy, sleepy ignorance as he woke to faint sunbeams lancing through the trees, before the memory came crashing back and wiped away all possibility of further sleep. Yuki’s eyes opened and his head snapped up. He was drowning – no, he was safe, but the air was damp and hot, like thick fur over his nose. Iskome, Meana, and the twins still dozed in the thicket, but the others had gone – were Laana and Kois back, and ready to greet him? No, they couldn’t be. He lay back down, his body hurting all over from swimming all day, feeling as if every limb had been stretched until it was ready to break, again and again. Mud clung to his fur and stained it red-brown. Laana wouldn’t like that – she’d take him to the water and wash it off.

He stretched and hesitantly rose to his feet. With every movement his muscles ached, but the thought of water made his thirst flare up, and in the thicket there was only that damp, clinging air that you couldn’t breathe easily, nothing you could drink. Outside, he could finally see where he and his group had found themselves.

Yuki had never seen so much greenery in one place. Ferns and vines and flowers and trees and bushes, all of which he didn’t know the names for, blended together in a tangle of leaf, stem, and bloom. Above his head a canopy of leaves grew, so big he could have sat on one with room to spare, and so thickly spaced he felt as though he had found not a forest, but a giant green cave, scattered with tree trunks for stalagmites. The air smelled of steam and leaf mould, and was still but not silent. The forest was full of chirping insects and calling birds, and in the distance the waves continued to break. They were calmed after the storm, no longer raging but slow and subdued. In the distance, someone was talking. He swivelled his ears in their direction, but could not make out the words.

He lost interest at the smell of fresh water, and found it pooled in the middle of a spray of leaves that sprang from the ground and made a hollow at about his height, where the rain had collected. He lapped it up, tasting a slightly bitter and leafy flavour, but not caring – it was fresh water, and in a few laps he gulped down the lot.

His thirst satisfied, he wandered in the direction of the beach, his paws leaving deep tracks in the rain-softened ground. He followed the voices, recognising more of his friends. The trees thinned out and the earth turned to sand. Sunlight shone intense and strong, forcing him to narrow his eyes as he left the dim embrace of the forest, but a breeze from the sea blew away the cloying humidity. Blinded for a moment as his eyes adjusted, he listened in.

“There’s one here!” Yuki heard the sound of sand being pushed aside. The speaker was Kuku, who sometimes kept company with Tanu. Yuki opened his eyes a tiny amount to see. Kuku’s distinctive coat, red with white spots, was easy to make out even with blurred vision, as was Tanu’s dusky pink. A third nicheling, slender and white, must be Kirro.

“Can’t you see anything?” Tanu said.

“I keep telling you, I’m not a seer.” Kirro twitched his long tail.

Tanu made a grabbing motion. “Look, I’ll open one.”

Yuku trotted forward, trying to see what they were doing, and was greeted with the sight of Tanu trying to pry open a clam while Kuku muttered “...no, no, that’s not how you do it...” and Kirro watched, swaying his tail. The beach looked peaceful, but the tideline was littered with debris thrown up by the storm – seaweed, driftwood, shells, all smelling of the deep. A few sand fleas scattered by his paws as he came closer. “What are you doing?”

All three looked up. Yuki waited for them to reply, but they all stayed silent. He pawed at his chest, mindful of the mud that was all caked into his fur and getting uncomfortable as the sun dried it out. But it wasn’t that. These nichelings had crossed the sea to follow him, and they wanted him to tell them what to do. That couldn’t be hard – he should know. He brushed some of the dried mud from his chest and it came away in nasty, dry flakes.

Tanu, who quickly went back to grappling with the clam, was the first to speak. “We were waiting for _you_. What’s the plan?”

Yuki’s eyes had adjusted a bit more to the light, so he could see some of the others wandering the beach further away. He couldn’t tell them he didn’t know. “Where’s Laana and Kois?”

“They didn’t come back.” Kirro flattened his ears. “Didn’t find them in the trees.”

Kuku stepped forward and sniffed at Yuki. “But don’t you know where the snow-”

“Leave him alone.” Kirro lashed his tail. Kuku shrank back, and Tanu went back to glaring at the clam, which still refused to open for him. Yuki nibbled at the mud still lodged in his fur, but it tasted too awful for him to lick off.

“I need to… find where the snow is!” He didn’t know if he’d convinced himself, let alone the others, but he left them to their clams and digging, and walked down to the breaking waves where he washed himself, rolling in the surf to get the dirt out of his coat. Even now he couldn’t help watching over the brilliant blue sea, so far removed from yesterday’s raging grey depths, as if he could see, if he looked long enough, two shapes emerging. Laana would find a clan and read it, and Kois would know all about snow and where it could be found. He splashed the water over his body – that he liked, at least, a refreshing contrast to the blazing sun. How could there be snow here?

Yuki turned away from the sea and let his wanderings take him back to the treeline and into the shade. The sun  shone  brighter by the moment, threatening to  burn his skin if he stayed in it too long.  Staying in earshot of the others, he sniffed around, trying to learn all the new scents and sounds. A movement caught his eye and he watched a black and yellow caterpillar bunch and stretch along a long leaf blade. It bristled with stiff hairs. Curious, Yuki watched, but from a safe distance – close enough that his eyes could still discern the shape, but not so close that Laana would warn him not to touch, as she surely would.

The caterpillar looped its way into the shadows and out of sight, and Yuki heard paws behind him, big paws, with claws. “What have we here?”

“Hello Rara.” Yuki looked up from the undergrowth. Rara was another of the nichelings who had accompanied them, big and strong (not as strong as Kois of course, because nobody in the whole world was as strong as Kois). Her plain grey pelt contrasted with three gems of differing colours. Yuki had never been able to find out how she made them do that; he’d never met anyone with more than one colour before.

“You look so lost!” Rara came to sit by his side – but not as close as Kois or Laana would. He couldn’t lean into her side and feel the rise and fall as she breathed in and out, and know that nothing could hurt him as long as she was there. But she wasn’t unkind, either. “I saw the way they looked at you. It’s not right.”

“What do you mean?” Yuki tugged at a half buried root.

“You’re a cub with one gem. They can’t expect you to know what to do.”

“But I’m Yuki!” Red earth cracked and heaved as he pulled, but the root held fast.

“That’s still too much for a one-gem.” Rara tilted her head down to look at her own multicoloured assortment. “I hunted with your mother, before you were born. I wanted to follow you our of respect for her memory. But we all dragged you here before you were ready, and now we don’t know where we are.”

“You don’t know that!” Yuki left the root alone and licked the red dirt from his paws. “Laana said it was time to go, and Kois said mountains were..”

His memory flashed back to Kois on the crossing, reassuring everyone they hadn’t gone astray because they could still see greenery ahead. For a moment he forgot about the heat and humidity, and pictured somewhere high and open, taller than the tallest hill, somewhere where you could see the whole world, and he imagined cold winds ruffling thick fur, paws stepping into deep, crisp snow, leaving behind perfect trails.

“Kois said mountains were inland!” He sprang off, out onto the beach again, where the others were waiting for him. “All we have to do is keep going, and we’ll find them!”

  


Yuki wanted to leave right away, but the others took some convincing, even if they had all been waiting for him to guide them in some way or another. They were all still tired and sore and hungry, and tales of jungle monsters lurked inside their head. But after a little time to think it over, they conceded there was no other plan, and if Kois had said inland was where you found snow, then there was nobody else who knew anything about it.

But it was not so long into the exploration that Yuki began to wonder if his idea had been such a good one. They were all used to well trodden trails marked out by generations of nichelings and worn deep into the land. Where their home island had been overgrown, it was easy to push through with a little effort. None of them had seen such thick growth as they encountered in the jungle. Yuki could slip through, but the others had to force their way through snarls of vine and bramble, and after yesterday’s exertion were soon ready to give up.

Yuki, who had found himself running head several times only to realise everyone was far behind, said “What if I went on ahead? I could see if it gets better.”

Meana clawed at a thick vine blocking her path. “That’s too dangerous for you.”

“He’s Yuki, can’t he do what he wants?” Tanu sat down with a thump.

Meana strode forward to Yuki’s side. “Then I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll come too.” Kirro stepped forward, ducking under a low branch. It was the first time Yuki had heard him speak since the beach.

With only three of them, they made faster progress through the undergrowth. Kirro’s lithe body let him wriggle through with nearly the same ease as Yuki himself. Meana’s stocky form still slowed her down, but she clawed through stems and thorns, never letting them make her lose sight of her companions. Still Yuki led them, scrambling through thickets and over moss coated branches and stones. Deeper into the forest they pushed, into a dark green heart where light was scarce and unfamiliar sounds echoed in the gloom.

In the shade of a great tree Yuki found his path blocked by a buttressed root taller than a nicheling, all gnarled and mossy and a deep red in colour like the earth from which it grew. To Yuki’s eyes the tree perched on top of its roots as if they were legs it could get up upon and walk away. He put his paws upon its side and tried to climb, but found himself unable to gain a foothold until Meana stepped in, letting him balance on her head as she pushed him up and over the mossy ridge. A spray of slender leaves brushed over his head, obscuring his vision for a moment as he half jumped, half fell to the other side. Shaking his head, he took a moment to realise where he had ended up.

“Look, it’s a trail!” Not the most well travelled of trails, a little overgrown with spots of greenery and tufts of leaves growing in the dirt, but a trail nonetheless. As Kirro and Meana clambered over to see, he sniffed at the pawprints left in the earth. Someone had been here not so long ago…

“Let’s see where it goes.” Meana brandished her clawed paw and stalked off. None of them needed to discuss it – a trail meant other nichelings, a tribe, and help. They might even know where Kois and Laana were – what if they were waiting for them right there – or where to find the snow!

Not far down the trail they came upon a stand of berry bushes and gave them a curious sniff. It had not been so long since they’d eaten, but pushing through the jungle was hungry work, and though Meana hesitated at first, but Kirro nibbled on one and she and Yuki followed, finding the fruit just as sweet as the ones back home.

“Shouldn’t we go back now?” Kirro licked his lips and swept his skinny vine of a tail over the ground. “We found what we were looking for.”

Meana picked a shred of pink berry flesh from her teeth with her long claws. “You’re right. They must be wondering-”

“ _My berries!_ ”

Kirro stood poised to leap, Meana flashed her claws and stood her ground… and Yuki stared. “You’re  _green!_ ”

The newcomer stood before them, yellow mane and bright green coat fluffed, but his wide, startled eyes crushed any chance he had of looking intimidating. Yuki bounced forward – he smelled like a nicheling even if he didn’t look like one, and he had two green gems. “Yes… yes I am green!” The stranger sat down and licked a paw. “Now what are you doing with my berry bushes?”

Meana put down her paw. “I’m sorry. We’re lost. We didn’t know these were yours.” She touched her gems. “I’m Meana.”

The green nicheling glared, but touched his own in return. “Vankirvan.”

“Kirro,” said Kirro.

Vankirvan glared down at Yuki, twitching his long whiskers. “And who are  _you?_ ”

Yuki opened his mouth, choking on his voice, and sputtered out “Roku!”

He didn’t know why he said it. Laana had told him it was the name his mother wanted him to have, before he became Yuki, but such what-ifs had never crossed his mind as any more than an idle curiosity, until now.

Vankirvan pricked his ears. “No. You must be mistaken. There’s only one Roku here.  _Ki-_ Roku.”

“You mean a _prince?_ ” Yuki gaped. Just like in the stories!

“Yes, exactly. And he’ll want to see you...”

  


No matter how frightening Vankirvan wanted that statement to sound, it was clear to Yuki, Meana and Kirro alike that he was no threat. The green nicheling had been even more startled to find there were even more strangers wandering the forest, and for a moment it was hard to tell who was more surprised by who. But he took pride in escorting them back to the Taimera Tribe’s lands, fluffing up his fur and striding ahead. “You’re all so lucky you found me!” he said. “This forest is  _full_ of apes!” He had another surprise waiting when he found out none of them had ever seen an ape, and happily set about describing “a huge hairy thing, with big teeth and a bad smell!” that put Yuki in mind of an even bigger, nastier bearyena.

Some of the others mumbled about whether Vankirvan was trustworthy, or if he was telling the truth about apes, but Yuki strode on ahead with Meana and Tanu close by, keeping close to their strutting guide. He gaped at the sights of the forest all around him, all lurid colours and twisted blossoms, and tried to hide his surprise at the sight of seeing other nichelings just as brightly coloured. Everywhere was something new to see and smell and hear! He would struggle to keep up sometimes, wanting to sit and stare, or wander off to sniff at the exciting new plants, but he kept up his pace, so the explorers would have someone to follow.

Vankirvan strode into the river cave with them all in tow, and Yuki gaped again at the sight of the sun taken underground. He longed to explore, to run and climb and sniff at the opening through which poured sunlight and greenery, but he remained still.

At the far end a group of nichelings, many with the same bright coats as Vankirvan, gathered to contemplate the cave walls. Yuki leaned forward to see what held their interest, but all he could make out were patches of colour – moss, perhaps? Did they read the future in stones, as the seers back home did for the sea?

Vankirvan dipped his head as he approached, and seemed to be about to speak when a blue nicheling turned her head and swayed her long, thickly furred tail. “Yes?”

At first Yuki thought she’d been annoyed by the interruption, but there was something in the blue’s demeanour that spoke to him of a gentle sadness, her movements elegant and silent, graceful but pained with melancholy, that he knew – the way Laana looked distant and withdrawn when she spoke of Reko. You couldn’t always help, so Kois had said – sometimes the grieving need time and nothing else will do – but in that moment he wished he could break away and sit by her side and ask what had happened to make her so sad.

“Ai-Relare, Ki-Roku,” Vanikirvan said, further lowering his head until his whiskers brushed the ground. “I found _intruders!_ ”

A ripple of shocked  mutterings rose and grew and multiplied amongst the explorers. Rara lashed her tail, growling “I  _knew_ this would happen!” whilst Meana snarled “We told you we were lost!” and Kirro pleaded “Stop, stop, can’t we talk?”

Yuki, still adrift, watched as a nicheling with a pelt of gold turned from the dappled wall,  his long ears slightly flattened. A pair of slender fangs gleamed in the borrowed, underground sunlight. Sleek, powerful, and tall, he regarded the explorers one by one, and crouched before Yuki, nose twitching, fangs shining. “Well now… what have we here?”

Y uki trembled, but stayed where he was.

“A little cloud!” The golden nicheling looked over his shoulder. “A little cloud come to the ground, Relare!”

A small intake of breath, and Vankirvan spoke again. “He says his name is ‘Roku’, Ki-Roku.”

Ki-Roku watched Yuki shake before him, one paw raised in curiosity. Relare silently padded behind him, watching from a dignified distance. For a moment Yuki fought to stay in place, imagining that any moment now the big nicheling would bite, sinking those long fangs into his side...

...and then the prince purred in amusement, kneading the ground with his paws. “A little  _me!_ ”

“But-” said Vankirvan.

Ki-Roku sat down. “Go and guard the berry bushes some more, Vankirvan.”

“Yes, yes, of course!” Vankirvan dipped his head again and scurried away, into the open forest, paws tapping on stone.

“Please, do ignore him,” Ki-Roku said, when he was out of earshot. “He means well, but his will to please is far greater than his ability to do the same.”

“And his striving lacks elegance.” Ai-Relare sat down, curling her fluffy tail around her paws, and looked at Ki-Roku. “But we still don’t know why they are here, Roku.”

“You really do mean no harm?” Ki-Roku lay down, his paws stretched out before him.

There was a chorus of “No!” from the explorers, Yuki included. He trotted up to where the gold nicheling sat. “Please, we all got lost. We weren’t supposed to be here, but...” He looked back – the others were waiting for him again. “We swam over the sea. There was a storm-”

Ki-Roku’s ears perked. “The one last night?” His gaze switched from Ai-Relare and back. They must have heard it raging, from the safety of their cave.

“We lost two of our number,” said Meana.

“I see...” Ki-Roku closed his eyes, and Ai-Relare followed suit, as did the others listening in. A solemn silence fell over the cave, one that Yuki longed to break. Laana and Kois weren’t gone! They shouldn’t act as if they were! What little of his mane had grown in bristled.

“Such are the whims of fate,” said Ai-Relare. At her words, every nicheling present opened their eyes again.

“But we’re still looking!” Yuki said. He perked his ears, an idea rising in his mind. “If we stayed here, would they find us?”

The two brightly coloured nichelings exchanged looks again. Ki-Roku titled his head to one side. “It… wouldn’t be right of me to refuse you,” he said, eventually. “There is food here, take what you like.” He lifted his paw to indicate piles of fruit stacked up by the terraces leading to the sunlight (ones that a few of the explorers had been making hungry eyes at). “You’re welcome to the cave.”

For a moment everyone waited, in case there were more words, or some catch that the golden prince had not spoken of. But soon it became apparent he had nothing more to say, and a few of the bolder members of the expedition began sniffing at the food stores, curious about the unfamiliar fruits, and while many of the cave’s residents (Ki-Roku’s court, as Yuki had started to see them) went back to their wall gazing, others broke away. Soon newcomer and local alike were mingling, learning one another’s scents, swapping names and sitting comfortably as they nibbled their food. But Yuki still didn’t move. Normally he’d have been the first to bound forward and introduce himself, but he felt himself stunned into silence, unsure why. He scratched at his ears with a hindleg.

“Do they really look to you to lead them?”

Yuki looked around, startled at the soft, quiet voice by his ear – he hadn’t heard anyone approach. It was Ai-Relare, her footsteps even gentler than her voice.

“I think so,” Yuki said.

She peered at him down her long muzzle. “How strange, for one so young.”

She couldn’t know who he was, Yuki thought, and without his name behind him, of course the way everyone looked for him to speak must look peculiar. A flash of inspiration broke in his mind – the reassurances Rara had given him on the beach. “My mother always wanted to go to a new island,” he said. “I think they all look at me because she’s not here any more.”

“Oh...” Ai-Relare’s eyes widened. Behind her Ki-Roki wandered up. Those long ears must catch a lot, Yuki thought.

“The storm?” he said.

“Oh, no, I don’t remember her. That was a long time ago,” Yuki curled his tail around his legs and stared at the floor, cold under his paws. “That was… that was my aunt, and her friend… we were swimming, and...” He closed his eyes and pressed his chin against his ruff, where his single gem sat. They didn’t need him. It didn’t matter if they saw this.

He felt a cold nose nudge him, someone nuzzling his side. “Little me?” A soft purring rose from Ki-Roku’s throat, and Yuki pressed his face against the golden prince’s, purring in return – not a purr of happiness, but the purr of a frightened creature trying to tell himself that all could still be well. A strangled, muffled squeak of a cry escaped his throat, hidden in the big nicheling’s fur where nobody could hear. A soft paw over his back drew him into Ki-Roku’s side. “Listen. Ai-Relare is my twin. Two months ago, we lost our father.”

“Sorry,” Yuki nuzzled into Ki-Roku’s soft fur.

“No, little me, I’m not telling to make you sorry! I’m saying we all lose someone, when we’re alive. But you know something? The river’s still flowing, the trees are all reaching for the sun, and you’re still here.” With claws as deft as Laana’s he combed through Yuki’s fur, teasing out a few knots from his trails through the jungle.

_They’re not gone,_ Yuki thought.  _They’re not gone and I know it._ But he said nothing. The others couldn’t hold him like this, couldn’t nuzzle him and speak kind words in his ears as if he was just another cub. But here, he wasn’t Yuki. He was Little Roku, lost and found again, and as he listened to Ki-Roku’s heart, he let another strangled cry forth from his throat.


	15. Memories

Laana listened to a hasty version of Yuki’s story as they sat in their embrace, Yuki whispering the parts about taking on the name Roku. For all Laana cared, she could have called himself Tata, as long as he was safe. But they couldn’t stay alone for long. One by one the other explorers crowded around them and flooded her with questions – where had she been, how she got here, and most urgently of all, what happened to Kois?

“We were lost,” she said, keeping a paw around Yuki, “the same as you. It sounds like back luck we were separated… and good fortune to be reunited. Kois… she was hurt, but she’s safe.” She cast her gaze around the cave for Anameis, and saw her seated a way off where the river began its flow to the outside world. She sat in a crouch with her tail curled around her body, her paws tucked into her chest. Nobody else seemed to have noticed her. “Anameis helped us. She saved us from the ape. In truth, I don’t know where we would be without her.” She trembled at the memory of hot breath on her face.

Anameis looked up, aware of everyone’s attention shifting toward her. “What? You were the ones trying to fight it.”

Yuki peered out from Laana’s embrace, narrowing his eyes as he always did when trying to see something far off. His nose twitched and he trotted away toward the orange nicheling, seeing, as always, a new friend before anything else. It was a wonder, Laana thought, that it hadn’t landed him in trouble yet – a wonder still that everyone he’d met in his life _was_ a friend. _Everyone except me,_ a guilty memory put in. She silenced it. That had been long ago – never again would she wish him harm. Besides, if she was going to trust Anameis, that meant she was another friend to her nephew. 

“I’m… Roku!” she could hear him saying. How long was he going to pretend? Was he scared?

It didn’t matter – she had no intention of staying. Kois would leave as soon as she was well, and Laana would follow. She kept an eye on Yuki anyway, as he and Anameis sniffed one another in greeting. “You’re that Little Roku I’ve been hearing about?” Anameis said.

“Yes! Who are you? I’ve never seen you before!”

“That’s because I don’t usually come here.” Anameis shuffled in place, drawing her limbs even closer to her body. “Why’d I want to? All they do is eat and make marks on the wall. I can do that wherever I want!”

Laana tilted her head at Anameis’ words. How did you make marks in a cave? You couldn’t leave footprints in stone. She must mean scent markers, to say who lived here and ward off intruders, and once again she thought of home, and the sea cave, where generations of seers had lived in the light and passed into its depths.

“You look lost. Hungry?” Laana jumped at the speaker behind her. It was the black digger, whose name she fought to remember for a moment – Iskome, that was it.

“Oh...” Laana worked at unknotting a small tuft of fur in her ruff. In all the emotional rush of reuniting with Yuki and hearing his story, she had forgotten about herself and how long it had been since her last meal. Trying to think back to that morning on the shore felt like recalling a distant season. “Yes, I suppose I am.” Now the tightness in her stomach, neglected for so long, made itself felt, and she longed for berries or meat. She sniffed, and caught wind of a sweet aroma above the all pervading smell of nichelings.

“They bring it in every day.” Iskome moved off, waving her tail to indicate Laana should follow. “This place is so full of food, no wonder they let us stay.”

No doubt the Taimera Tribe knew better than she about what was good to eat in the jungle. Laana gave the food piles a cautious sniff as Iskome led her to them. Her nose wrinkled at the rotten scent of the big smelly fruits Anameis had so happily eaten earlier – no matter how good they looked, Laana wouldn’t be trying one of those any time soon – but why should she care when there were so many others to choose from? She recognised the pink berries, round and big enough to fit in a paw and so ubiquitous back home she had always known them as “berries” with no further description, but so many other scents, sweet and delicious, invited her in, with a medley of shapes and colours to match. Fresh, mild, sweet, strong, tangy – which one to choose? She was about to ask Iskome for a recommendation when a movement out of the corner of her eye drew her to a second pile. “Tanu, no!”

“What?” Tanu sat by a smaller pile, holding a berry in his paws with a pattern that Laana did know – bumpy, purple-black like a bruise, as sweet scented as any other berry but deadly to the stomach. What were they doing here – had Ki-Roku secretly meant to poison them? Where was Yuki? Why had she left him alone with these nichelings where he could eat one of those things at any moment? She’d told him about the poison berries, hadn’t she? Of course she would, but what if she hadn’t? Frantic, glancing about, she tried to find him in the crowd.

Tanu groaned as if he’d heard all this before, ignored her, and bit into the berry. “I c’n eat ‘m,” he mumbled through a mouthful.

“No, you-” Laana began.

“Relax, it can’t hurt him.” Iskome said, stretched out beside her with not a care. “They told us how it works – he’s got poison in his fangs, so the poison in the berries can’t hurt him.”

“Oh...” Laana licked down a stray clump of fur on her ruff, avoiding Iskome and Tanu’s eyes.

“You see all the ones with the bright coats?” Iskome went on. “They can eat them too. They said if you have a bright coat it means your body makes poison and keeps it inside you.” She rolled over and stretched out her limbs. “I wish I had poison. I would look _so_ good.”

“I… see...” Laana said, though all these new things kept running around in her mind, making very little sense. No wonder the Taimera nichelings could get away with looking like flowers. Nothing would think of hurting them. Nervous, she looked around, mindful that she’d left Yuki with such a nicheling. She touched her gems and took in a slow breath – poisonous and normal nichelings alike were already intermingling with no harm done. There was nothing to fear.

She let Iskome tell her about the different fruits on offer, and picked a long, yellow one with a pleasant, mild aroma. Trying to bite into it she found its skin tough and unpalatable, but Iskome showed her how to peel it away to get to the soft white flesh inside. She liked the flavour – creamy, sweet, and bearing an aroma she could not name, like nothing at home. She and Kois must have been walking through food all day without knowing.

She looked up at the sunlight stream. Was it fading, should she go back? She should bring something for Kois – it wasn’t fair she should be trapped in Anameis’ smelly den (safe though it was) while Laana got to take her pick of so many delicious new foods.

“Laana!” Yuki came running toward her, rearing up to place his paws on her gems. She leaned in and gave his mane an affectionate lick, grooming the stray tufts that kept coming undone whenever he bounded about. “You should leave a mark!”

She tilted her head. “Leave a what now?”

“So everyone remembers you!” Yuki stumbled back, waving his paws in the air and dropping back on all fours. “It’s like… I’ll show you!” He grabbed a berry in his mouth, a plain old pink one half the size of his head, and trotted off, holding it high to keep it out of his paws’ way while Laana followed.

She thought he wanted her to leave her scent behind, as Anameis hinted, and that left her puzzled – this was not her home, and it would be impolite to go around marking territory as if it were. She understood even less when her nephew led her to a cave wall that didn’t smell of scent marks at all, but to her continued bemusement like old fruits. Yuki dropped the berry at his feet. “Look!” he said. “There’s Ki-Roku and Ai-Relare! And we’re all here too – there’s Kirro and Meana and Kuku and here’s _me_ _!_ ” He jumped up at a patch of wall, rearing up on his hindlegs and wobbling to balance himself.

Laana looked back over her shoulder. Ki-Roku wasn’t here – he was over by the pool, lapping up some water. She came closer to the wall, trying to decipher Yuki’s meaning, and then she saw. What she had taken for veins of coloured stone or growth of moss turned out to be paw-marks set in berry juice, so many they were beyond counting, overlapping one another so that the newest were fresh scented and crisp, the oldest ghostly traces against the rock. “What’s all this for?” She sniffed the mark Yuki had left behind. His own scent still remained behind the slightly fermented hints of old berries.

“Ai-Relare said they’re memories.”

“Well that doesn’t make sense. Memories are in here.” Laana touched a paw to her gems.

“But when you look at them,” said Yuki, “you remember who made them.”

“I think I see?” Laana tilted her head and, in a flash, thought of scent markers in a den, tracks on a path, things left behind to trigger a thought of the one who made them. The Taimera did the same – not to mark territory or to keep predators at bay, but to remember. Like Kois leaving her forebearers’ bones in the nest, they spoke of who had lived here, long after their gems grew forever dull. Here was a place of magic, for inside the cave, away from wind and rain, their memories would last forever.

“You should make one!” Yuki rolled the berry toward Laana with his nose.

“Well, if everyone else did...” She took a bite, and the sweet flavours released brought back more memories of home. Letting the juices ooze from the flesh she pressed her nimble paw into them, wrinkling her nose at the stickiness.

“Put it next to mine!” Yuki reared up to show her. Finding a clear spot among the overlapping prints, she pressed her paw next to his mark, leaving it for a moment to let the juices stick, then pulled away to leave a fresh imprint.

“Is that is, did I do it properly?”

“Yes! Now everyone can remember you!” Yuki reared up to get a better look at her mark, while Laana licked away the juice stuck in her paw. It was no use – she would have to wash it off in the pool. Yuki followed her to the still water, where she cleaned herself off and lapped up a drink. It was pleasantly cool, with a slight mineral edge.

Yuki bounded over to where Ki-Roku sat nearby. “Laana left a memory!”

“You like our Memories, then?” Ki-Roku said.

“I must admit I couldn’t make sense of it at first,” Laana lifted her head from the water. “But I do now.” If only Reko had been able to do the same, and leave something of herself too!

“Your friends left theirs too, I’m sure you – oh, my apologies!” Ki-Roku scrambled backward and dipped his head. “I had no idea, should I not be calling you _Ki-_ Laana?”

“What have they been calling me now?” Laana said, confused but suspecting a good natured prank.

“You have blue gems!” Yuki sidled up to her to speak on her ear. “I didn’t realise but that must make you a _queen!_ ”

“Don’t be so silly, I’m not the queen of anywhere or anyone!” But as she looked around she took notice of all the other gems to be seen. Among the cave’s nichelings were many colours – Yuki’s pink, Anameis’ orange, yellows and purples and the always ubiquitous greens, but not a single other blue gem save one – Ki-Roku’s central stone, flanked by two oranges that must have been his natural colour. “Oh no!” She touched her own. “No, these mean I’m a seer. I’m sorry to have confused you.”

“A seer?” Ki-Roku sat up and perked his long ears. “We’ve never had any of those!”

“She can open clams and tell the future!” Yuki said, “and she can read the sea and the tides and everything! She even told us to come here!”

Laana pawed her antlers – she’d lost the seaweed after cooling off in the river again and again during the hottest parts of the day – and peered into pool. Below she saw waters so still and clear she imagined she could reach her paws out and touch the billowing rock formations underneath as if nothing stood in her way. Not even a ripple marred the pool’s perfect surface. “But this is not the sea,” she said, “and it cannot speak to me.”

“Laana!” Yuki said, with that gasp that meant he had an idea and nothing would make it budge. “You should tell them a story about it! You’re so good at that!”

“A _story!_ ” Ki-Roku jumped to his feet. “Now there hasn’t been a good storyteller in this tribe for a few seasons – and no new stories in many more!” He patted Yuki’s head. “Good idea, Little Me! Let’s hear a story!”

A few other nichelings looked up at the word  _story_ , and no wonder, for there was nothing like a story on a long evening, when the hunting is over and the fruit gathered and the signs read, and it was one of the duties of a seer to remember and tell them. But Laana was aware of time slipping away, and Kois waiting in the forest. “I would love to,” she said, “but my friend is still waiting for me.”

“But it’s getting dark outside,” Yuki said.

Sure enough the light faded, in such small increments with the passage of time that Laana had not noticed until Yuki brought it to her attention. The shafts of daylight that pierced the depths, the path to the outside world where the river flowed,  both grew dimmer with every moment and marked evening’s inevitable rise and the night to come. “I know. And Ki-Roku, I owe you so much, all the stories I know.” Surely to leave now, after such fortune and courtesy, would be so unspeakably rude that blind Mela of fortune herself would cast unfavourable attention to the nicheling who did so. But Kois waited...

“I’ll go,” Anameis hopped over. “What’s the message? ‘Everyone’s alive, you can stop worrying?’”

“You would?” Laana said.

“But you’ll miss the story!” protested Yuki.

“So I’ll hear it another time. I told you, I’m not bothered by what goes on in here. I’ll come back for you in the morning.”

“Will you be safe?”

Anameis waved her tail. “You saw me, I can take care of myself!” She flashed her jumbled teeth with such impunity that Laana would have thought Tata himself had taken female form, if she hadn’t already proven herself trustworthy.

“I… very well, then. Bring her some food, and tell her I’m sorry and I’ll see her soon.”

“You’re worried about her, I get it. Sure you’re not someone’s mother?” Anameis stretched, first her good front leg, then each back leg, and shook her head, mismatched ears flapping around. “Be seeing you.” She wasted no time hopping away toward the exit, and Laana watched until she was out of sight.

“My apologies,” she said, when Anameis was gone. “You understand that my friend is waiting. But of course I would be happy to tell you a story – it is the least I can do.”

“Who knows about tomorrow?” Ki-Roku laid back down with his paws stretched before him. All around him other nichelings gathered, both his own tribe and the explorers. Laana could guess that they had spent time enough to be comfortable around one another, for the way they sat and lay together. All eyes were on Laana, seated by the pool, and Yuki by her side.

“Which one are you going to tell?” Yuki said.

“One for our hosts,” Laana said, “one I’m sure you haven’t heard before. I’ll tell you the story of the first Seer of the Sea – the story of Doeli.”


	16. The Tale of Doeli and the Sea

This is a story of long ago. The world was new, but Tata had played his first trick and Eve had retreated into her long sleep, and the young sun shone upon a world where much was yet unearthed.

In those days there lived two nichelings, Jun and Omi. They had travelled far to found their own tribe and settled upon a small island. There the sea was never far away, and if you listened hard on a quiet night, in the very centre of that island, you could still hear waves breaking above the rustling grass, so I heard. Here they began their tribe, which they named Jannu.

Jun and Omi had many children together, but every one was a male. Try though they might they were unable to bear any daughters, and as time went on they feared for their tribe’s future. Though they loved their sons very much, with no females to their name they would soon die off.

One night, Jun and Omi were resting together when they heard a rustle in the grass and smelled a nicheling they did not know. Had a wanderer come to be a mate to their sons and save the tribe? The grass parted, and they saw that it was a wanderer, but much to their disappointment another male, and an old male at that. His snout was twisted with Tata’s curse, and upon his head were branching horns that pointed to the sky. They had never seen a nicheling with horns before, and they shrank back, afraid. “Who are you?” said Omi.

“My name is Kuronu,” said the stranger, and he turned his head from them to show he was no threat. “I came from across the sea.”

Jun and Omi, disappointed as they were, could not turn down one who had travelled so far, so they invited him in to their den and told him of their own journey to this island and their fledgeling tribe.

When their story was finished, it was Kuronu’s turn to speak. “So I see that you are worried, and for good reason,” he said. “Listen. I have travelled far and seen many things, and a little magic remains with me. I am old now, and will not live long, but I can do something for you, though it may seem strange to ask.”

“What do you mean?” said Omi.

Kuronu looked her in the eye. “I can give you a daughter.”

As Jun and Omi crouched together in the grass, their minds filled with questions, Kuronu could see that he had unsettled the pair, so he continued. “Please, do not feel that you have to decide now. I only wish to help, but let yourself think first, and give me your answer tomorrow night.” And with that, he left Jun and Omi to their den.

They talked through the night and well into the next day, wary but tempted by the stranger’s promise. But in the end their hopes for their tribe were stronger than their fears, and so the next night Omi came to Kuronu’s side and accepted his deal.

The next morning Kuronu was dead, for just as he said, he was old.

But he made good on his promise, and soon after Omi bore two children, with white coats and horn buds to match their father’s. The first, who they named Nivar, was another son, but the second was the daughter they had longed for. They named her Doeli.

Together Nivar and Doeli grew. Nivar had a love of the land, and he learnt all about the plants that grew upon the island, while Doeli loved the sea. It was Doeli who first discovered that clams are good to eat, and Doeli who watched the tides and observed how they matched the time of day and phase of the moon. She learnt to swim in the waters and chase fish in the shallows, and the shore became her home and her greatest love.

One day, when exploring the coast at low tide, she found a pool left by the sea’s retreat and peered inside, curious about what creatures she would find there. In the water she saw, looking up at her, the reflections of nichelings she had never seen before, nichelings who were not part of her tribe, who had never been of her tribe. When she looked back she was alone, but in the water they looked back up at her, as clear as her own face on the surface of the waters. And so she learned that to her eyes the water was an opening to other times, and the past and future were revealed to her across its surface.

Well, visions or not, time must always pass, and soon Jun and Omi grew old too. One day, as Doeli was watching her pool, she saw a new nicheling, a black and ghostly creature whose shape flickered though the waters were still. It ran off as soon as she saw, but for a moment they locked eyes and she knew that it had come for the tribe. So she ran to her family’s den, and when she arrived she saw that Jun was dead and his mate and sons were grieving over his body.

“Did you know?” said Omi.

“I feared I did,” said Doeli, “and now I do.” And she told her family of the vision in the pool, of the ghostly nicheling who met her eyes and ran. The tribe huddled together in the grass, each one imagining a shifting shadow that ran through the blades unhindered.

“Then it was the ancestral spirits, come for him.” Omi touched her nose to her mate’s body. “He is in the deep, now. No-one can follow him there.”

But Doeli could not bear to see her mother so lost and broken, and though Jun was not her father in blood he had been in spirit, and his loss struck deeply in her gems. “No!” she said. “I can swim far, and deep. The ocean is part of me – I can find him!”

But deep though she could dive, how was she to reach the abyss? You know the abyss is not the sea we look upon every day. It is the great gulf between islands, a place of no light, no sound, no up or down. Those who have crossed the sea to find new lands may swim over it, but none may sink into its depths until it is their time. Doeli knew this as well as all of you.

It was her twin, Nivar, who found the answer. He had, as you remember, a great love of the land, and he knew every plant upon the island, where it grew, and whether it was good to eat. He knew more about plants than I expect any nicheling alive today. And he had learnt that there was a rare plant that grew in the shallows that, when eaten, would bestow the gift of underwater breathing. Together they searched and found one of those plants, and all the tribe – Doeli’s mother, twin, and many brothers – gathered to watch her go. To each one she said her goodbyes, before she ate the plant and dove under the sea.

You know that out there in the world are nichelings with fins and gills, and you might think they have some inkling of where Doeli swam. But not even they could tell you how she found the abyss. I know one thing – it is a journey no living nicheling may make. It is no place for those who still have light in their gems. Even with Nivar and his plants, Doeli would have been forced to turn back or die were she not a child of the sea itself. How far to the abyss, then? Ask the ocean. It alone can tell you.

Deep and deep she swam, far from the sun and wind, until she came to a place of no light and no sound. In the dark she felt claws grab at her body and jaws snap, and the movement of creatures in the water around her, invisible in the blackness. They knew she was not one of them, that she did not belong here, and they grabbed and clawed and bit to warn her. Turn back, they said, turn back and leave this place. But she would not be deterred. Onward she swam, searching the abyss.

And at last she saw a light ahead, a light that could shine in no place but here, for it was only in such total darkness that it could be seen. But after her journey in total darkness, it seemed to her eyes to shine as bright as the sun at noon, and so she followed. As she swam closer she could see it was not one light but three – the light of Jun’s gems. There he was, his body outlined in that green light, that gave the faintest of shapes to the paid of them in the dark.

“Doeli!” He let her swim closer, and they touched noses in joyous reunion. “How can you be here?”

“I swam,” said Doeli, and she told him of Nivar and the plant, and her promise to the Jannu Tribe. Jun listened to her words as they circled one another in the water.

“My dearest,” he said, when she was finished, “my little Doeli, deer of the sea, you know how many have dreamed of this journey and none have undertaken it. You are the bravest creature I know. But I cannot return.”

“Why ever not?” said Doeli.

“What has happened has happened,” said Jun. “I was old, up there on the surface. If I returned, I would soon be back here again. You will journey here again one day, you and Omi and all your brothers. But this is not the place for you now. The sun is warm and the wind is fresh – return to the surface and feel them again. That is where you belong.”

“Then what about my promise?” said Doeli.

“There is not a moment in the world where a creature does not wish they could do what you have done, little deer. But the sea is already with you, as it always has been. What is must be, but you will find ways to guide your tribe with the gifts you have been given. Do not fear for me. The world down here is as vast as the world above, but it is not for you to see yet.”

And Doeli knew there was nothing she could say to convince Jun to break the laws of the world, so they nuzzled cheeks with one another one last time, and as she swam away she imagined she could see other beings outlined in the dark by Jun’s light, beings that were there one moment and gone when she blinked. And she she turned and swam away, back to the surface.

I can’t tell you how long she took to return, any more than I can tell you how far she swam to find Jun. But when she came to the shore and stood on land, blinded by the sun, she found herself alone. Every scent and sound was richer to her senses than ever before, every bird-call a song, every berry bush a promise of the finest feast. Finally she came to the family den where Omi and her brothers waited, and they fell upon her, purring and calling out that they had not seen her in three days, and had thought that she had gone to join Jun forever in the depths.

“But where is Jun?” said Omi. “His scent is upon you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Doeli, and she told them the story of how Jun refused to return, and what he had told her in the dark.

“He was right, you know, about the sea,” said Nivar. “Look at your gems!”

She did, and saw to her surprise that her gems, which had been green all her life, were as blue as the ocean on a clear day. The sea had indeed left its mark upon her.

As time passed she learnt that it had done more than that. Everywhere she looked, the sea gave her messages. When she opened a clam or walked along the tideline, she saw in the patterns clues to the future. Sometimes they told of good fortune, and sometimes of danger and grief. She could do nothing to change what they told, but with her swift warnings she could prepare the tribe for any challenge they faced.

Doeli taught her children to read these signs, and they taught theirs in turn, and so began the line of the seers – nimble paws to break open shells, and sharp antlers that point to the stars, so that all the worlds exist for them in one. To this day we travel into the dark places when we are grown to receive Doeli’s blessings, and emerge with gems of blue. What is must be, that is true, but with a little foresight and the gifts of the sea, we know that we can face whatever may come.


	17. The Broken Path

The story came to a close upon a scene of old light that gave no more than shape to those in its presence. Here was a warm, dark world of touch and scent, wrapped in a sleepy twilight hour. Nichelings huddled together, drowsy, but each one touched by the tale that had unfurled before them.

“That’s so sad that she couldn’t bring Jun back,” said Yuki, from his spot nestled by Laana’s side.

“I know,” said Laana, “but that is how the story goes. Doeli had to learn that even with all her gifts, she could not stop all the terrible things in the world. She could only weather them. But knowing that was a gift, too.”

“Yes,” said a soft voice. In the dark Laana took a moment to place the speaker – Ai-Relare, the blue twin. “What will, will be.”

Laana looked away, into the light upon the pool’s surface. There were no reflections or ripples, only the suggestion of a sheen in the darkness, beneath which still waters reached unseen depths. She heard murmurs or praise from all around, many of whom had never heard the story before. The tales of Doeli were rarely told outside the seers’ circles; this had been a rare exception, worthy of the Taimera’s kindness.

“Can you see things in the water too?” said Yuki.

“No, that was Doeli’s gift alone. I am only a seer.”

She felt Yuki nudge her side, feeling his way around her in the dark. “But she must have _looked_ like you!”

Laana purred in amusement. “You know, you would not be the first to say that.”

As the last light drained from the cave, Laana could feel a perceptible change in its atmosphere. The day was over at last, and now a story had been told and its listeners had taken it to heart, so it was time to retire for the night. Laana knew this slow, collective winding down from the seers’ cave. There were no words spoken, no orders given, but one by one, sleepy nichelings curled up in their nests, until all was still and night ruled the world. She stretched out and yawned. Ki-Roku’s hospitality extended to his nests; Yuki led her to the terraces, where she felt her way around with paws and whiskers. Their nests smelled of soft, fresh jungle grasses.

Yuki lay pressed by her side, purring, and was asleep in moments. Laana stayed awake, listening. Nichelings breathed slowly and shuffled in their sleep. Outside, the jungle never fell silent. The chirps of nocturnal insects and chattering cries of other creatures she did not know reached her ears even deep within the cave, as the waves did back home. Sometimes she would nuzzle Yuki’s sleeping form to remind herself he was there now, that all was well. And in those moments she would feel alone again, though nichelings slept all around her and Yuki by her side.

In those moments she imagined a bigger, stronger form curled around the two of them. Those imaginings dragged her back to wakefulness – the recollections that she had left Kois with Anameis, and the fear of whether she had decided correctly. But not just guilt – a longing gnawed at her chest and touched deep within her gems.  Ever since their journey began, Kois had been by her side, to the shore, across the sea, and into the forest, and now her absence pulled at Laana like hunger. One night, she told herself in her attempts to sleep. Just one night, and they would see one another again.

  


Kois dozed in the heat, keeping still and quiet by instinct. Insects chirped at the far range of hearing, birds sang in the canopy, and once or twice she heard movement in the distance. But nothing disturbed her, and she fell into a light sleep where sound, scent, and leaf-filtered light became fleeting dreams. Shape and sound danced in her mind, and a few times in that fleeting yet timeless space, Kois looked up to see a three legged nicheling surrounded by spirals of light walking toward her, one shrunken paw held close to their chest.

She opened her eyes and perked her ears. Through the twilight forest she heard pawsteps, and the grass parted. Anameis appeared, her mouth full of fruit that she dropped by her feet. “Laana says to tell you everyone’s alive.”

Kois peered around her, but Anameis was alone. “Where are they?”

“With Ki-Roku in his cave. I said I’d come back and tell you nobody’s died while she’s off being all polite.” Anameis sat down and scratched an ear. “And you’re supposed to eat these.”

Kois sniffed – it was hard to tell in the dark, but they smelled like the berries back home. Laana would certainly insist she eat. “Then they are all safe?”

Anameis looked up from nibbling dirt from between her hind-toes  and  put her foot back down. “That’s what I  said, didn’t I? She said she’d come back for you tomorrow when it’s light. You want to eat that or what?”

“Yes, I will.” Kois bowed her head. “Thank you.”

They shared the berries as darkness fell and stars began to shine in what little of the sky could be seen between the trees. Anameis was as messy as ever, but Kois couldn’t bring herself to care about her habits. Yuki had been with the explorers indeed, if none of them had come to harm.

It was a shame, she thought, that there were no nut trees here. All these berries were overwhelmingly sweet after too many, but no wonder, when there was so much greenery in the jungle. She stood up, holding her injured foreleg off the ground, and hopped to the stream for a drink. For a moment she saw stars reflected in the water before they broke apart as she drank. The coldness felt like something she had forgotten after so long in the oppressive heat, and she plunged her head into the water, but as in the daytime it was short relief in the humid air. Even night would not allow the jungle heat to release its grip. Settling back down, growling at the pain shooting through her body, she said, “Where is the cave?”

“Up the river. Not thinking of going now, are you? Because I’m not.”

“Now? No.” She trusted Anameis told the truth. Laana would choose to stay, if it was the polite thing to do, and there was nothing even she could say to persuade her otherwise. “It is best I stay here.”

“That’s true.” Anameis was by now no more than a shadow in starlight, but Kois could hear her roll over in the dirt. “What with those big old bearyena claws!”

Kois said nothing. A still silence fell between the two of them. Anameis lay where she was. Though they could not see one another, Kois could sense the other nicheling’s gaze upon her as surely as her own.

“What, wrong thing to say? I get it.” There was a scuffling noise as Anameis sat up.

“No.”

“They’re some big claws, then.”

“No,” Kois repeated. “I _am_ part bearyena. You are right, it is obvious to anyone who looks hard enough. I would not deny it.”

“Suit yourself.” More scuffling as Anameis batted something unseen across the ground. “Not as if you’re going to eat me. You’d have done that already.”

Kois closed her eyes. In the dark nobody could see her ears – smaller than normal, curled inward, another sign of predatory ancestry – flattened against her horns. Her claws, as Anameis noted too big to be born of nicheling blood alone, lay flat on the ground. She inhaled, deep and slow. “Anameis.”

“What?”

“There is a child with my tribe. He doesn’t know. He isn’t ready to know. Can I trust you?”

“Or what, you’ll rip me apart with your big bearyena claws and your big bearyena teeth?” Anameis laughed and rolled on the ground, then went silent. “Course I won’t tell anyone. You think I go around telling where _I_ came from?”

And again, Kois imagined, or felt, that Anameis’ eyes were fixed upon her, and she told the truth. “Thank you.”

“Don’t need to. It’s nothing big.” Anameis shuffled around a little more, but soon went still, and it was obvious the conversation was over, because soon after her slow breathing indicated she’d fallen asleep where she lay.

Kois licked at her shoulder and foreleg, tasting metal  in the torn flesh. A little of Laana’s scent remained on her pelt. Although the night-time heat bore down upon her, leaving her drowsy, sleep seemed far away. It was not the pain, nor the sounds of the jungle or even Anameis’ snoring. All these things she let flow, as if floating down the stream as leaves fallen from on high. Eventually, she closed her eyes and imagined what she missed – two other creatures, a family together in the dark, and only then  did she sleep.

  


Dawn in the caves, like dusk, was a gradual, communal affair. It started small, an early riser stretching and stepping outside to watch the sun come up, careful not to disturb their nestmates. But soon, driven by sunlight peering into the cave mouth, others began to stir. One by one they rose, to eat and drink and begin their day. As if every nicheling were part of one greater creature that took time to awaken, coming to itself as the sun climbed the sky, the peaceful nighttime atmosphere gave way to the day’s activities, until even the sleepiest of the tribe were up and about.

Laana often found herself as one of those early risers, enjoying the calm, still hours when the realm of night had not quite retreated, and she could sit undisturbed and watch the world pass through the borders of day. But this morning was not one of them. She fell asleep late and slept late, and awoke to the chatter of Ki-Roku’s tribe, opening her eyes to fresh morning sun spilling in from the opening above. Yuki was gone, and she sat up with a start, but relaxed on seeing him running around the cave, talking and playing with anyone who cared to listen. She stretched and arched her back, easing out the stiff muscles.

It seemed she was the last to rise today, and though she had trouble sensing the passage of time in this unfamiliar land,  it must be late in the morning. Had Anameis returned? A few orange nichelings stood out in the crowd, but none of them the stunted, toothy adolescent she knew. She rubbed her antlers and shook her head. Maybe Anameis was a late sleeper as well. Nothing to worry about.

A harsh dryness in her throat led her to the pool. She lapped up her fill and splashed a little cold water over her face to ward off the heat and the last of her sleepiness. Droplets splashed over the water’s surface and shattered her reflection as it looked back up at her. But there was no gift of Doeli in the spreading ripples, only broken light on an ever shifting surface.

Yet, she thought, this mist be the source of the river she and Kois followed, and she had seen it flow into the sea. In a certain sense, was there a difference between the still waters of the cave and the ocean and its messages?  _But the sea didn’t speak to you either,_ she thought.

She pawed at her antlers, still bare of decoration, and startled as she spotted another nicheling drinking nearby. Ai-Relare lapped up water a couple of nicheling lengths away, as silent as her soft paws. Laana dipped her head as the blue nicheling finished. “Good morning, Ai-Relare.”

“Yes, it is.” Unlike her twin, Ai-Relare seemed to move in slow motion, as though swift motion would break her slender legs. She looked over her shoulder at the light shaft striking across the cave, angled with the morning sun, as if it were all new to her.

“My thanks for taking us into your home. I hope once my friend is well we can stop troubling you and move on.”

Ai-Relare’s eyes gazed off into a distant spot, far beyond the cave walls. “You are welcome. What world is it where we do not take in the lost?”

“I apologise for asking...” Laana looked back at the cave mouth, “...but do you know Anameis?”

“I know of her.”

“I’m waiting for her to come back. Do you know if she will be here by high sun, or after?”

Ai-Relare closed her eyes and lowered her head to her chest. She did not move or speak. Struck by awkward guilt, Laana looked around. Had she saddened or offended her in some way? She opened her mouth to blurt out an apology, but stopped herself. Caught in the moment, she rubbed behind her ear at the base of her antlers. Nobody paid them any attention. Nichelings wandered the cave, chatted, ate, and contemplated the wall of memories, but Laana and Ai-Relare occupied their own space. She felt her ears flatten. “I-”

“Gather fruit,” Ai-Relare said. “Fish in the river. Tell a story, or walk through the forest.” Her eyes opened. “Nobody can tell you _when._ ” She let out a soft little sound, nearly a sigh, nearly a laugh. “Not if you cannot.” She rose to her feet and padded away into the depths with a slow swish of her long tail.

Laana, left by the pool, sat in perplexed silence. She crouched down and shrank into a ball. Whatever rule she had broken – and there must be one, for such a reaction – nobody was going to explain it to her. But still nobody noticed, or even looked in her direction, and slowly she rose back to a sitting position. Perhaps Ai-Relare had, in her own way, been giving advice? Silais always used to say something like this – you should always make yourself useful, if you didn’t know what the future would bring.

Yuki seemed happy to play with the others, so she left him with instructions to tell Anameis to wait for her, and emerged from the cave into daylight. Although the rainforest canopy blocked most of the sun, out here the river carved a ribbon of open sky. She let her eyes adjust as its milky, limestone laden waters flowed on by her paws.

After a while she began to explore, sniffing around, ears pricked, occasionally looking back to remember the way. The memory of the ape remained fresh in her mind, but calm silence ruled over the riverbank. Silver fish swam just below the water’s surface, scattering as her shadow passed overhead. If she stayed still long enough they re-emerged, cautious at first, but growing more confident. Kois could have swiped them out of the water with a flick of her paw, but whenever Laana tried she ended up with the slippery things wriggling out of her grasp if she caught one at all. Once, a fish had slapped her in the face with its tail as it escaped, making it very clear what it thought of the situation. Kois, compassionate as ever, had made a good effort not to laugh.

Deciding to leave fishing to those who knew how, Laana found a trail leading up the bank and deeper into the forest, and followed in the hopes of finding a berry bush that nobody had picked clean yet. Not _too_ far, she told herself, just a little way to see. She weaved through skinny saplings reaching out to the distant sun. Ferns brushed against her side, and she ducked under low branches. A sweet scent let her onward into the jungle depths.

She stopped – her paws touched rough earth, and she stepped back. Before her the well worn trail gave way to a churned up patch, claw marks and broken earth dragged across her path, leaves scattered everywhere, and the fresh smell of nicheling nearby. She crouched low, her breathing shallow and her ears straining, but she heard or smelled no predators. If a bearyena, or worse an ape, had been here, it had been long ago. Slowly she relaxed, and peered off to her side where the marks pointed.

This deep in the forest, plants grew where they could, snatching what scarce beams of sunlight penetrated the trees. The broken path ended here, with still no scent of danger. Laana crept forward, wary as a rabbil, moving in slow steps over soft fallen leaves. Only the ambient sounds of the jungle reached her ears, so ubiquitous that by now she heard them as a form of silence. Ahead, a tree’s buttressed roots sprawled out across the forest floor. A few bulbous, red plants grew in its shade, and the same sweet scent wafted through the under-brush.

A rustle of leaves, a shaking branch, and she jumped, startled – only to see a small blue frog leap for safety at her passing. She took a deep, relieved breath as her heart slowed back to normal. The frog watched her from one of the moss coated roots, its throat pulsating. She touched a paw to her gems, and saw that below it grew a lone berry bush. “Why thankyou,” she said, and purred in amusement at the ridiculousness of thanking a frog. _No doubt, this place is turning me strange._

She tried one of the berries and found it as sweet as ever, if not a little small. No ape or bearyena interrupted her breakfast, and at last she relaxed and concluded Ai-Relare had been right. What good was there in waiting when there was food to gather, omens to find, or games to play? She nibbled away and listened to the jungle sounds passing her by. Dappled sunlight fell on her pale coat. Soon she would leave this place, but for now, she was right here.

She picked a few more berries to take back, half expecting Vankirvan to show up and protest, but nobody crossed her path. With a couple grasped in her teeth and a couple more tucked to her chest with her nimble paw, she hopped back down the trail and followed her memories back to Ki-Roku’s cave.

It was for this reason that she responded to Anameis’ presence with a muffled “M’mees?” and not anything more dignified.

“Oh, there you are.” Anameis sat hunched up on the mossy rocks spilling from the cave mouth. “No, don’t say anything, go tell that cub of yours we can go. Oh, and Kois isn’t dead.” She scratched her ears. “Should have said that one first.”

Laana didn’t waste time dropping off the food and finding Yuki, who ran ahead of her out of the cave, excited to see Kois and Anameis alike. He at least seemed to understand he should stay quiet when Anameis led them back to her den, watching her stop and listen for danger once they were away from Taimera territory. But about halfway through their journey, by Laana’s reckoning, some font of curiosity must have welled up. “Anameis?”

“Mm, what is it?” Anameis kept on walking, but turned the larger of her ears toward him.

“Why do you live so far away from the others?”

Anameis’ ear twitched as if an invisible insect had landed on it. She came to a halt, but didn’t look back. Laana touched a paw to her gems. She had to say something. Someone had to.

The problem was… well, it wasn’t exactly a _problem._ But anyone who looked at Anameis and saw that shrunken paw and those teeth sticking out wherever they wanted couldn’t fail to notice she was rogue-born. Nobody had said anything, because nobody needed to. Anameis had been so helpful, and well… it just wasn’t _polite_ to go around talking about such things. Especially not in front of a child… though if the legends were true, Yuki had been a rogue himself in a few of his lifetimes. But that was another conversation for when he’d come into his next gem. No, it wasn’t a problem _at all,_ but…

“Because I like it out here!” Anameis waved her tail and started walking again. “This cave is _boring._ ”

They didn’t mention it again, and though Laana could feel the matter stirring deep below like a worm in wet sand, Anameis had no more to say. So they walked on, until Anameis’ rotten scent markers told Laana they had arrived at her territory’s border. Her nose wrinkled unconsciously, but they were soon past it, and she craned her neck over Anameis’ shoulder. What had happened to Kois in the night? Was she well?

Yuki saw her first, darting past Anameis and out of Laana’s sight with a squeal of “Kois!” Anameis stepped aside and waved her tail to let Laana past, and there was Kois, laid in the hollow formed by the fallen tree, with Yuki playing at her paws. Her deep rumbling purr filled the clearing as she bent down and licked Yuki, bowling him over and making him laugh and swat at her nose.

Laana wanted to run and join them, but she stayed frozen, watching as a jolt, a pang of longing that she could not put into words, shot through her chest. Here they were, back together as a… a family? “Kois?” she said. “Are you well?”

“As well as I can be,” said Kois, while Yuki pawed at her gems. “Still hurts to talk.”

“What if I told you all about how I got here?” said Yuki. “Then you can listen and you don’t need to talk!”

“I’d like that very much,” said Kois.

So Yuki launched into the story he’d told Laana last night, while Kois listened and Anameis, who’d heard it already (apart from the bit about Yuki’s name, which he whispered over) wandered over to the stream for a drink. Laana found her feet and settled in by Kois’ side, where she sniffed at the wound in the big nicheling’s foreleg. Though pleased to find it healing well, with no smell of infection, she licked at the mending flesh anyway, to be safe. Kois, still listening to Yuki’s story, turned her head. She said nothing, but nuzzled against Laana’s chest, and, feeling that jolt again, Laana lifted her head and let Kois press her scent against her gems.

As Yuki told of how he went exploring in the jungle with Kirro and Meana, Laana found herself mulling over the explorers left behind at the cave. She could dare to hope again, now they had all made it, now they were together… but she found her mind drifting back to what would happen next. They would move on and find snow, of course, just as Yuki’s birth foretold, but then the tribe would need to grow and establish themselves in the new lands. And not until now had Laana ever thought of the prospect of a mate.

Explorers to new islands knew they would eventually take a mate from the few fellows that came along with them, for the sake of practicality if not love. It was another thing you didn’t talk about, like Anameis’ parentage, or the reason for Kois’ oversized claws, so she had put it out of her mind with all the other impolite things. But now… not she lay by Kois’ side, while Yuki told his story and Anameis lay a little way off, listening in, and she remembered last night’s gaping loneliness. And it struck her there and then that this was what she longed for, the family she had been yearning to have. She leaned in closer. If she was to take a mate, he would have to not mind…

...No. She didn’t want a mate. She wanted _Kois_ , in all her contrasts, big and strong and fierce, quiet and calm and compassionate. As Laana lay by her side, feeling warmth and softness and strength, a surge of thoughts ran through her: confusion, fear, and more than anything else, love. Dizzy, she laid her head on her paws, Yuki’s voice suddenly distant. A starving madness cut deep into her chest, striking through her gems. She longed to nuzzle Kois, to purr and hear her respond in turn, but she kept still. _Dear Doeli, how can this be?_

Yuki was talking now about how encounter with Ki-Roku and how he showed Laana the wall of memories. Hardly daring to move, Laana draped her tail over Kois’, another shy, hesitant touch.

For a moment Kois didn’t respond. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed. Perhaps that was for the best; did Kois need such foolishness in her life? But then the big nicheling looked at Laana lying prone beside her and nuzzled her cheek, leaving her scent behind. Laana closed her eyes and purred, and Kois rumbled back. Another rush ran through Laana’s body, another stab of hunger in her chest, but this time, she dared again to hope.

None of it made any sense. But they were a seer, a hybrid, and a child god, watched over by a rogue-born two-gem. Perhaps it didn’t have to make sense after all.


	18. The Trailing Vine

Kois spent four more days in Anameis’ den. The urgency of her search now dissolved, she let herself rest without fear. The jungle’s cycles of night and day played out with her as their witness. Now and again, a little rain fell. The leaves above funnelled it into fat droplets that splashed on anyone caught out in the open, but Kois didn’t mind. Like many large creatures, she weathered it out, and found some comfort on the break it gave her from the forest’s oppressive heat. Even her gems shone a little brighter for the rain’s passing.

“Lucky for you it’s the dry season,” Anameis said once, in the middle of a heavy fall.

“Then what was the storm?” Kois said, and Anameis fell about laughing. Even Kois couldn’t resist an amused purr. The storm no longer held its grip of dark memories.

Kois found herself liking Anameis. No matter what she looked – or smelled – like, the orange nicheling was as good as her word. Yuki liked her too, and on his visits he would often be seen play-chasing her around the clearing or swatting at her tail. In the quiet times, when Laana and Yuki were back with the tribe, Kois told Anameis the story of how and why she and her friends had come to this island. She left out the part about Yuki – Laana had told her enough for her to guess he wanted to remain incognito in strange places – but she told her everything else she knew of her ancestral tribe, the Yukirs, and their legends of distant lands. She was no storyteller like Laana, but Anameis listened with full attention, never fidgeting when Kois told her about snow. Anameis had never heard of it, or imagined such a thing could exist. “Is it like... cold dirt?” she said, when Kois tried to explain.

“A little, and not,” said Kois. “To be fair to you, I’ve never seen it before. But I know I will.”

“How’d you know that?”

She didn’t want to out Yuki, but she had another answer, and it was just as true. “Because of Laana.”

Laana herself still spent much of her time at the cave with the Taimera Tribe. A sense of obligation for Yuki’s rescuers drove her, and Kois understood. She dozed or talked with Anameis when she was gone, and looked forward to her visits. But something changed about her since Yuki’s return. Every touch she exchanged with Kois, every word, brought with it an air of shyness and hesitation. She’d shake it off a little later, and sit by her side and tell her about the day’s events, but Kois could still sense that shy awkwardness underneath the jungle’s noisy silence.

Still, she enjoyed Laana’s presence, and listened to her talk about the Taimeras, Ki-Roku and Ai-Relare, and their wall of memories. “I think my paws would be a little too big for that,” she said, when Laana told her about how she and Yuki made their marks.

“I don’t know… could you?” Laana sat by her side, paws tucked into her chest.

“Maybe. Maybe not. It won’t matter soon.” It would be nice to leave a mark. It would be nice to think the Taimeras were all like Anameis. But why worry about it when they would soon be on their feet and never see this place again?

What mattered was sitting here now, with the future open and Laana beside her. _I wish you weren’t so shy,_ Kois thought. But she had no idea how to say it, so she purred and lifted her head, letting Laana nuzzle the deep red gems set in her collar, and let the moment be.

  


On the morning of the fifth day, as Kois and Laana shared a drink at the stream, Laana spoke. “Could you come to the cave to see the others? You don’t have to meet Ki-Roku… I mean you don’t have to come at all… but some of them were worried about you...” She looked away and licked a paw.

Kois flexed her shoulder. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” One of her ears turned to listen in to Yuki, batting a stick around in the dirt behind her.

“Of course… I’m sorry.” Laana turned away, her tail curled around her legs.

“What’s wrong, are you still hurt?” Kois felt tiny paws on hers, and looked down to see Yuki.

She’d planned to tell him once he came into his second gem. He’d seen stranger and more frightening things than a bearyena hybrid in all his lifetimes, but right now she saw a child at her paws, a child who had not yet tapped into his memories. “No,” she said. Anameis’ healing fruit had done its work – her new fur grew over healing flesh, and even her ribs had ceased to hurt. “You see… I look a little different to many other nichelings, and sometimes that makes them frightened.” She swung her tail and dragged the bony club at its end over the ground, and let it come to rest by Yuki’s side.

Yuki sniffed at it. “That’s not fair!” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll be scared. I already told them how strong you are!”

“You did?” Kois said. A little way off, Laana turned an ear in their direction.

“Yes! I told them you were so strong you could make bearyenas go away just by telling them to, and then Anameis told me how you fought the ape, and everyone wanted to know how you did that because nobody can do that!” He gave Kois’s tail a playful swat.

“Oh… _you…_ I’m a story!” Kois purred, and Laana pawed at her face. “Well, I suppose I can meet the others.” She had no intention of entering the cave, but as she had told herself, what did it matter when soon they would be gone?

A snore cut through the clearing. Anameis liked her sleep, and lay curled in a ball at the far end. Kois gave her a nudge with her nose., making her grumble and kick in the dirt. “Mrgh?”

“We are going to the cave,” said Kois.

“Wha… oh.” Anameis flicked an ear, but her eyes stayed shut. “G’by then… watch out f’the plants...” Her voice trailed back off into heavy snores.

“Something tells me it’s a little early in the morning for her,” said Kois. She stretched out to her full length, taking up the whole breadth of the clearing. “You two will have to show me the way.”

Kois remained undecided if she wanted to go as far as the cave, even after Yuki’s excitement. Maybe on some level he understood, if he’d felt the need to hide who he was, too. But she had spent too long in one place and grown restless. In life there were times to rest and recover, but a relentless energy prowled through her body all night, and no heat or humidity or frightened tribemembers could dampen the pure pleasure of being on the move again and following a trail to new, unseen places. She let Yuki and Laana guide her along the trail, and took pleasure in the moments she found herself in – giant blossoms, fluttering insects, and rays of light shining through the trees, and more than anything else the sheer joy of motion after a long confinement.

They saw no other nichelings for a while, but when Kois remembered how silent even Anameis’ three legged hop could be, she couldn’t call herself surprised. Living with those apes must have moulded the Taimeras into stealthy experts. Even Laana and Yuki moved with more caution after a few days in their presence, ears twitching at every new sound. Kois, too, though she felt suddenly ungainly, kept her mind sharp and focused, drinking in every detail.

She heard the river soon before she saw it. Yuki had told her of how it flowed from Ki-Roku’s cave, but that must have been in the distance, because all she saw was a strip of water below and blue sky above. Insects swarmed over its surface, trails radiated to and from its banks, and upon the shore a white nicheling lounged.

“Kirro!” All caution gone at the sight of a friendly face, Yuki ran forward. Kirro sprawled out on his belly, his tufted tail dangling in the water waiting for a fish to bite.

“Hey, Little Roku,” Kirro said. “Found anythi- _Kois?_ ” His normally half lidded eyes widened. “I didn’t know you were...”

“Hello, Kirro,” Kois said. She trod carefully around the water, so as not to let her shadow frighten the fish away. “How are you all?”

“Good...” Kirro looked away, fixed on a distant point in the shadows. “Actually...”

“What’s wrong?” said Yuki.

“Nnnnothing.” Kirro shuffled his limbs under his lanky body. “Aw, I should just say. A few of us were talking back at the cave, and we were going to tell you proper and all, but...” He twitched his tail, leaving ripples in the water. “Some of us were saying we wanted to stay. Here, I mean.”

“Oh,” said Kois.

“But what about the mountains?” said Yuki.

Kirro nudged him with his long snout. “It’s not your fault. But we already came a long way, and after that storm...”

Kois sat down, and curled her tail around her paws. A thread of hurt betrayal twined through her thoughts and –  _no,_ she thought, stilling it. She couldn’t tell anyone what to do. But she remembered Kirro before the storm, asking questions about the Yukirs, wanting to learn their stories and songs, and the little trail of resentment wriggled on through her mind. “I… I cannot stop you.” She closed her eyes, and held her head low, chin resting on her gems.

“Oh Kois...” Laana nuzzled her shoulder.

“Sorry,” Kirro said. “Look… we’re not all staying. Kuku still wants to come with you… Meana as well… Rara said she’d stick with you...”

“I understand,” Kois said. It had been their choice to come with her, and their choice to stop. How long had Kirro been mulling this over, wondering how he would break the news to her? It would hurt, but the pain would fade. “Thank you for telling me.”

“But it’s _not_ fine!” Laana pulled away, and Kois heard the crunch of twigs and dead leaves as she paced back and forth on the riverbank. “You waited all your life for this!”

“Laana.” Kois opened her eyes to see her friend pawing at her antlers in distress. “Please. It won’t help.”

“No, no, no, I can’t let this ha- _aigh!_ ”

For an instant Kois thought Laana had tripped on her paws and fallen on her face, but in an eyeblink she watched her vanish tail-first into the undergrowth, scrabbling and clawing at the ground and leaving a trail of churned earth and leaved in her wake before disappearing into the tall grass. “Stand back!” Pelt bristling, tail lashing, Kois positioned herself between Kirro and Yuki and the spot where Laana had been, prepared to fight off another ape if she must… but there was nothing. No growls or snarls, no hot breath, no rank predator scent. “Laana?” Kois tore at the grass, grabbing it in her mouth and ripping it from its roots. “Laana!”

A cry sounded out in return, a wordless, strangled gasp for breath, muffled as though coming from beneath a pile of fallen leaves. Had some stealthy ambusher dragged Laana underground? But as Kois tore through the undergrowth she saw nothing but a tall, bulbous plant, hidden between a tree’s sprawling roots – a red, veined, oversized flower bud big enough to swallow a nicheling…

“She’s in the plant!” cried out Yuki, at her feet.

“Plants _eat_ you?” exclaimed Kirro.

Kois pressed her paws to the plant’s veiny surface. She felt shuddering underneath, heard choked gasps for air coming from within. “Laana? I’m here, we’re going to get you out.” But no words came in reply, only Laana’s strangled gasps for air. Kois clawed at the plant’s stiff exterior, but it was like trying to rip away a tree. “Yuki, Kirro, get help! Someone will know what to do!”

Kirro and Yuki vanished back into the undergrowth with a quick “yes!” between the two of them. Kois kept clawing at the plant’s sides, listening for Laana’s breaths and feeling the thing shudder with her struggles, but her claws barely scored the tough exterior and she dared not slash it open for fear of hurting her friend. Letting out a roar of frustration, she claws to where the bud’s petals grew from a softer, leaf-ringed base. Biting was no good – her jaws were too wide to get any purchase on the plant’s base, and she ended up spitting out a mouthful of dirt. But, digging in her claws and letting out all her strength with another roar, she  dug in her claws and pulled out great chunks of red, sap-soaked plant flesh. At last the thing shuddered and creaked, and the bud opened like a grotesque flower, and Laana fell to the ground with a thud. A sweet scent escaped into the air, billowing out toward the canopy.

“Laana?” Kois nudged her still form. “Can you hear me?”

A red-brown vine snaked around Laana’s body, pinning her legs and wrapping her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs. As Kois watched, her chest shuddered and twitched, and the vine tightened its grip. She lay still, eyes closed, fur plastered with shining sap and gems the colour of a dull, clouded sky. Kois glanced around, but nobody had come to their aid, and she tore at the vine with her teeth where it connected to the plant’s core. A repulsive, rubbery texture, part plant and part muscle, ground between her jaws. The sap coating it burned her tongue, but she would not let go. Pinning the vine to the ground with her claws, she wrenched up her head and tore it in two. It shuddered and fell limp, relaxing its grip upon Laana. Kois gnawed it from her friend’s body, freeing her chest and throat, but still she did not move.

“Laana?” Kois pressed her head to her chest, listening for the hint of breath or a heartbeat. “Come on now. You’re out of there.”

She’d given herself no time to think while freeing Laana from the plant. The future and past narrowed down to the present moment,  where all she could do was act. But now everything that fled the moment – past, future, and thought alike – ran back to her. She licked Laana’s still form, ignoring the burning pain in her mouth. Maybe she could get the blood flowing again, maybe there was still something she could  _do_ other than sit here and nuzzle the limp little form before her and face a future without Laana.

Her gems were dull. Her gems were dull, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Kois’ claws dug deep into the leaf litter and left deep furrows in their wake. Nobody had said anything about the plants. Five days and not a word! A growl rose in her throat…

The sharp gasp of breath by her side went unnoticed over the deep rumble. But Laana twitched, kicking her legs and scattering the fallen leaves she lay in, and with a burst of relieved hope Kois licked her some more, willing blood and breath to flow again. “Easy,” she murmured. “You’re safe now.”

Laana twitched again, ripples running up and down her body. Her chest heaved with the exertion of breath. “Kois?”

“You’re safe,” Kois repeated, and looked down at the marks torn in the ground before her. “I’ll tear that thing up like we did the poison bushes.”

Laana lifted her head, wobbling, and pawed at her face. Her eyes flickered open, and she leaned against Kois’ side, still gasping for breath. “I couldn’t...”

“Slow and deep now,” said Kois. “It’s all over.”

Laana tried to follow her advice, but she looked around, panicked, and tried to get to her feet. “Where’s Yuki?”

“He’s gone with Kirro to get help.”

“Oh no, no he’s not!” Laana shivered as she stood up, the last fragments of vine falling from her body. “Where did he go?”

“Back down the river,” Kois said, “but remember, they know their way around. Let’s get you cleaned up first.”

Laana let Kois guide her back to the river, where she washed off the burning sap and Kois tried to drink away the stinging pain in her mouth. It still burned, but seeing Laana safe, she didn’t care. Besides, Laana had taken worse punishment –  the sap had burned away her fur in small patches, leaving her haunted and bedraggled.

“They never told us,” Kois said. “Why would they not warn us?”

“I think I already tried to warn myself.” Laana stared at her reflection in the river. “Do you remember? I saw one of those plants before, when it was just you and me. I knew something was wrong! I could feel it – Tata’s work, I called it!” Frantically she combed her claws through her tangled ruff. “It felt like… what did I feel… like the forest was alive but dead underneath… _Yuki!_ ” She sniffed the ground and ran upriver, Kois on her tail as she followed Yuki and Kirro’s scents.

They must have gone back to the cave, Kois thought – she knew the cave was upriver too, and that was where she would have gone for help, regardless of who saw her. But before any sign of a cave came into view, she heard voices ahead and Laana turned and ran up the riverbank, following another narrow path. As they approached, the voices resolved into words.

“-can’t _do_ anything, stop it, stay still! I don’t care what you-”

And then a cry of “Laana!” from Yuki, and Kois saw a bright green nicheling grasping him tight as he struggled to free himself, whilst behind them two more Taimera nichelings pinned Kirro to the ground.

“What is this?” Laana lowered her head, antlers pointed at the scene. Behind her, Kois began to growl.

Yuki tried to speak, but the green nicheling clamped a paw over his muzzle. Kois’ growl grew louder. Explanations for the scene before her rose and fell in her mind. By the looks on the Taimera’s faces, Laana shouldn’t be here now – or was it  _Kois_ who should have been swallowed up by the plant, with Laana an accidental victim? She felt her limbs begin to shake, and steadiest herself. Now was not the time to speculate. They knew exactly what she was.

“L- Laana!” sputtered the green nicheling. “Little Roku here was saying… oh, see, Little Roku?” His grip relaxed, letting Yuki struggle again, but he didn’t let go. “You must have been mistaken, she was never in the plant. She’s right here!” He nodded at Laana… and then saw who was behind her. At the sight of Kois walking out from behind, his ears drooped, his eyes wide and pupils enlarged. His paws went limp, and Yuki wriggled free and ran to Laana, burying himself in her chest.

Kois stepped forward, her pawsteps slow and calculated, tail swinging, head held low and horns pointed at the scene before her. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” she said, “but you’re going to let the other one go, too.” The two nichelings holding Kirro down stared, not backing off yet, but seriously considering it.

The green nicheling, who must have been the fastest on the uptake, dropped to all fours and shuffled backwards. “Do what she says!” he shrieked, and all three Taimera nichelings  scurried off down the trail, leaving Kirro to get back to his feet, unhurt but shaken.

He licked a paw, and smoothed down his ruffled mane. “I am seriously reconsidering what I told you earlier.”

Kois gave him a nod of approval and turned her attention back to Yuki. Laana held him close to her chest with her nimble paw over his back, in that way that Kois meant she wouldn’t let him out of her sight all day. Her blue eyes flickered upward as Kois and Kirro approached. “I don’t understand,” she said. “They didn’t hurt him, but why would anyone do that?”

“Don’t know,” said Kirro. “We came up here when we heard them, said you were trapped in some sort of giant plant… and they did _that_ just after we said.”

“They didn’t listen!” said Yuki. “We kept saying you needed help and...”

“And they said they couldn’t do anything, but...” Kirro looked back down the trail. “You saw it. It was like they didn’t want anyone to do anything. Like they ate some _seriously_ off berries...”

“They were _trying_ to… leave us in there?” Laana pulled Yuki closer. “Kois, do you think...”

Kois sat by Laana’s side, feeling her press up against her flank. She sat still as a boulder, yet threads of thought and memory burrowed deep. “I won’t assume the worst,” she said. “But I won’t rule out that yes, one of us was supposed to die in that plant.” Her tail curled around Laana and Yuki alike. Already those quiet moments with them in Anameis’ clearing felt like so long ago…

A memory flashed, surfacing from the fog of the day.

“Laana,” Kois said, “do you remember what Anameis said, before we left?”

“She didn’t say anything,” said Laana. “And I don’t need a clam to know she’s still asleep. Do you think she...”

“I think she warned me. ‘Watch out for the plants.’ I thought she was dreaming. I’m going to talk to her.” Without waiting, she stood and turned away. Nor did Laana and Yuki, both swiftly at her heels.

“Me too,” said Kirro. “Don’t know her, but Vankirvan… that little green one… he’ll be talking to Ki-Roku by now. I’m not waiting for that.”

Laana and Yuki knew the way, and led Kois and Kirro along the riverbank. But they hesitated with every step, sniffing the ground in search of more trailing vines. Kois peered downriver, trying to remember the path, and wondering if she would have to show her claws to Anameis when they met. How easy it was to link the day’s events together like a spiderweb, to imagine Anameis sneaking off to tell someone about the hybrid hidden in her den! But that, she reminded herself, was only one possible story. The ending, as Kois’ father was so find of saying, had yet to be told.

She often thought of him at times like these; a nicheling who could never have hidden his bearyena blood, with his narrow, ridged skull and jaw full of sharp teeth. Yet his patience was a deep well, his calm a still day upon the meadow.  _Look and listen,_ he said.  _Know before you act._ So she would wait and see what Anameis had to say…

But she was trapped on a slow path, and all four of them startled when, with a rustle of grass, two nichelings stepped out onto the bank to greet them. With Vankirvan by his side, Ki-Roku stood his ground and barred the path ahead.


	19. Far From the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The homage is intentional, yes

Kois stayed still. Deep within her thoughts she sized up Ki-Roku. Small, like all the Taimera nichelings she’d seen, and so quiet of footstep that she’d never known he was there until he stepped out before her – but how fast could she be before those fangs struck? She dropped the thought. “Ki-Roku, I assume? How pleasant to see you.” Head dipped, she stepped out in front of her companions. “I am Kois.”

Ki-Roku stood with one paw raised, long ears slightly flattened, body poised ready to run. The little green nicheling by his side – Vankirvan, Kirro had called him – looked up, waiting for him to do something. His eyes darted back and forth from his prince to the hulking beast before him. It had escaped Kois’ notice until now that only two gems rested on his chest, marking him as Anameis’ age. A nervous adolescent, hoping his elder would set the world to rights again. But Ki-Roku could only stare. Well, Kois was used to that, but when she moved forward she saw that his gaze fell at a point behind her. Laana, bedraggled and crouched over Yuki, ears flat, back hunched, but keeping her horns pointed at the yellow prince.

“You… lived...” His quiet voice hid among the droning insects and flowing water that filled the air. He licked his paw and set it on the ground, looking all around himself in a daze, as though he had woken from a dream to find himself in a place he had never seen before. “Vankirvan.”

“Yes, Ki-Roku?”

“Thank you for bringing me here. You can go now.”

“...yes, Ki-Roku.” Vankirvan stalked off into the long grass, fur bristling and his flat swimmer’s tail held high.

Ki-Roku watched him leave. “Forgive me...” he said. “I… there was nothing, yet...” He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a swarm of biting insects.

Yuki had told Kois all about Ki-Roku whilst she lay in Anameis’ den. A prince, he’d said, but not like the princes in stories. He  _liked_ stories, and songs and jokes and play, and good food, the latter of which there was always plenty to go around. But the jovial ruler of Yuki’s stories was not here. Instead, someone small, confused, and lost sat before her, someone whose world had been broken, though she could not guess by what means. Kois lay down, stretching her paws out in front of her. “Ki-Roku. With all respect, I am here to ask you why your tribe left my friend to  _die._ ” She crossed her paws, keeping a relaxed posture.

“Because...” Ki-Roku’s ears swivelled. “Is it true, then? Laana, you were taken by...”

“The plant,” Kois finished. She coiled her tail around Laana’s shivering form. Over her shoulder, Kirro watched.

Ki-Roku’s ears turned this way and that. He crouched and looked over his shoulder, pawing at the ground as if one of the vines might grow across his path. Finally, head held low and eyes looking up at the nichelings before him, he spoke. “Because you  _don’t_ get out.”

“And what does that mean?” said Kois.

A soft little paw touched her shoulder. “Because there’s never been a nicheling like  Kois ,” Laana said. “Is that right, Ki-Roku? I’m… here now because Kois saved me. But...” She shivered, and crouched protectively over Yuki. “Your tribe didn’t know it was possible to escape!”

Silence fell over the riverbank. By her side, Kois felt Laana shuffle backwards, pulling a shaken and silent Yuki along with her.  Her burst of bravado gone, she pressed against Kois’ flank.

_I don’t understand,_ thought Kois. But a second thought sprang up before the first had a chance to fade. The others were all so small and light next to her. She wasn’t thinking as they would.

You could fight an enemy, intimidate it, or run and hide. But what could you do to a plant? A plant cared nothing for how fast you could run, how well you could hide, how threatening you looked. There was no battle to win, unless your claws were strong enough to tear yourself free – and the Taimeras’ claws were small, their paws soft and stealthy, to hide from the apes that roamed their forest. But they all bore gems that shone even in the jungle depths. Yuki had told Kois all about the food that grew here, such a bounty that even a stunted rogue born like Anameis, scavenging on the tribe’s outskirts, could keep herself well fed and teach an outsider about all the fruits that grew in her rich homeland.

So you told stories and sang songs, and left marks on the cave walls for others to remember you by. Today you lived. Tomorrow, the trailing vines might take you. But then again, they might not. So you let yourself live, and you never spoke of the plants, because what more could you do?

“All you wanted to do was spare me from hoping,” she said.

“And I am sorry.” Ki-Roku’s posture mirrored Laana’s, as though they were reflections in water. “You fought an ape. There’ll be stories about that for lifetimes. But they won’t believe what you did today. They won’t listen. They won’t want to.”

“Believe me,” said Kois, tail swinging, “I wouldn’t want to stay another night in this place.” _Because this is where you banish us,_ she thought, _and I know how this ends, prince of prey._

“Anyone who wishes to stay...” Ki-Roku’s eyes flickered up to Kirro - “...they may, but the rest of you...” His ears twitched again, and he returned to checking over his shoulder as though hidden eavesdroppers lurked in the grass.

“We’ll meet before sunset,” said Kois. “ _Well_ before sunset.”

Ki-Roku exhaled in one long breath. He sat back up, paws neatly together, back straight, and his central blue gem shining like the sky between its orange fellows. “One more thing. I heard you were looking for the mountains. I don’t know anything about those, but if you keep going into the hills, they say there are clouds and mist and cold rain.” A shiver rippled down his body. “Nasty stuff – I’d never go. But it might be what you’re looking for. I’ll wish you good luck, if I can do nothing else.”

“...Thank you,” said Kois.

She bowed her head, and Ki-Roku returned the gesture before vanishing into the grasses from which he came. Kois pricked her ears, but his soft little paws carried him away with barely a sound.

“What happened?” said Yuki. “I don’t understand what he did!”

“And I didn’t expect it.” Kois got to her feet, brushing leaves and twigs from her pelt.

“I had better explain on the way to the cave,” said Laana. “And… oh goodness, I’ll have to explain to them all, too...”

“I’ll come with you, tell them too,” said Kirro. His long tail lashed in the air.

“Well, we had better go if they want us out before sunset.” Laana brushed a little dirt from her coat and patted down Yuki’s mane. “Kois?”

The thought of parting ways with Laana left a ball of unease inside Kois’ stomach, but she dug her claws into the ground. “I still haven’t spoken to Anameis,” she said. And after today, she needed to speak with her more than ever.

  


She could have torn Ki-Roku’s throat out, and the thought crossed her mind more than once on the way to Anameis’ den, as a small part of her asked _why not?_ But she already knew.

Laana wouldn’t leave Yuki, so she’d given Kois directions to Anameis’ den, where Kois carried on alone, passing a fallen tree here and a flowering bush there that she remembered from the morning. Sometimes she picked up snatches of Laana’s scent, worn into the trail from all the times she’d passed up and down its length. She kept close attention to the ground beneath her paws, clawing at anything unfamiliar until satisfied the plants growing across her path posed no threat. Fear held no grip over her mind, but her attention focused to a point, past and future coming together to a sharpened present.

She found Anameis gnawing at the stem of a half-eaten fruit. The orange nicheling didn’t look away from her breakfast, but said, “Kois! Where’d the other two go?”

“You warned me about the plants.”

“Did I? Must have...” The stem dropped from Anameis’ mouth, her ears flattening. “Oh… oh no...”

“They’re safe.” Kois sat by Anameis, adopting the same relaxed posture as when facing Ki-Roku. “But they nearly weren’t.”

She told Anameis the full story, of how the plant snatched up Laana and her rescue. She half expected Anameis to protest when she told her of how she pulled Laana out and freed her from the vine, but the orange nicheling listened with wide eyes and said nothing, and in a way Kois had been expecting that, too. She kept quiet while Kois told her of her subsequent encounters with the Taimera nichelings, and finally Ki-Roku’s story.

“So you’re leaving now,” she said when Kois finished her tale, listlessly pawing at a stone embedded in the dirt.

“Yes.”

“ _Just_ leaving? If that were me, I’d-”

“Yes.”

“But _why?_ ” Anameis jumped to her feet, fur bristling, tail lashing. “I know you’re not supposed to talk about...” she pawed her gems- “...the plants… but you didn’t even know that, and...” She hopped a few steps away, back turned to Kois. For a moment she was silent, then she sank to the ground, her tail slowly sweeping across the dirt. “Go on. I know you came here because I didn’t warn you.”

And this, too, Kois had anticipated, but she never pictured what she saw now, her friend and denmate from these past days waiting for the big hybrid to tear her apart. “You did more for us than anyone else in this forest. You _said_ something.” She rose to her feet and sat back by Anameis’ side, but still the orange nicheling kept her head turned away. Kois’ ear twitched. She’d never wanted to say what she knew was coming next, though the thought pressed on her mind all the way here. “Anameis, let me tell you something about the Yukirs. I’m sorry, it won’t be easy for you.”

Anameis’ body lurched with a barking, humourless laugh. “They have those things in the mountains too?”

“No,” said Kois, “but it is very cold, and sometimes it is hard to find food. My parents told me that when the winter came, that was when the tribe came together for warmth and their children were born. But you know sometimes children are born sick, and there is nothing that can be done about it.”

One of Anameis’ ears turned to listen to Kois’ words, but she said nothing. A quiet moment passed, one that Kois took as a nonverbal cue to carry on. Anameis must already know where this story ended – no sense in walking away now.

“They would leave those children in the snow during the night,” Kois said, “and if they lived, that meant they were part of the tribe. And if not, they returned to the snow, where we all come from in the end.”

Anameis kept her ear turned in Kois’ direction, and peered over her hunched shoulder. Her shrunken, lazy eye stared back, and Kois resisted the urge to turn away. Sick children, she’d said, not rogue children, because Yuki sometimes took the form of a rogue and his children were always blessings, but many saw no difference. She told nobody else this story – not Laana, not even Yuki, who judged whether or not to return those children to the tribe or the snows.

After an agonising silence, Anameis spoke. “Why did you tell me _that?_ ”

Kois’ ears lay flat behind her horns. She could have told Anameis the Yukir’s reasons – so that sickness would not spread in the dens, and precious food would not go to waste on those with no chance at life – but Anameis must have guessed those, and what comfort would they bring _her?_ No, she deserved the reason it lurked in Kois’ thoughts all the way to her den. “Because now, do you think I have any place in telling you what to do about the plants?”

Anameis looked away. Head held low, her shoulders began to shake, and Kois thought her about to cry out before she realised she was laughing again, hollow and humourless though it was. “So you’re just as bad as us, is that what you’re saying? I get it. Nice lesson. What’s the real point of this? Just come to say goodbye?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Kois said. “First, I was going to ask about the plants, but Ki-Roku cleared that up. Now I want to ask you something.”

“Mhhm?”

“I realise this must seem strange after what I just told you. It’s your choice, but I came back to ask if you wanted to come with us.”

“To the snow?” Anameis said, ears perking. She peeked back over her shoulder, shrunken eye staring off into the distance, at a spot far over Kois’ head.

All Kois said was truth – after realising Anameis couldn’t be part of a plot, all she could think of was opening up her makeshift tribe to the nicheling who opened her den to her. The idea lurked in the back of her mind ever since she told Anameis of the mountains, and listened to her wonder. “You don’t have to,” she said. “I know this is your home.” But how could she leave without extending a paw?

“Kois, you know… of course I’ll go!” Anameis barked in excitement and rolled onto her back, rocking from side to side as she kicked the air in joy. Kois purred at the sight, until Anameis fell still. “Wait. You _mean_ this, right?”

“Of course I do.”

Anameis rolled onto her front and shook dirt from her fur. She looked around the clearing, hopped to the tree roots and the torn hole they made in the ground, and stared – then turned and leaped at Kois with such force even she found herself digging her claws into the earth lest she bowl her over. Anameis’ loud, broken purr filled the clearing as she nuzzled against Kois’ chest, close to her gems. Kois draped a huge paw her over her shoulder and pulled her closer, as Laana so often did with Yuki.

“Now?” said Anameis. “I got nothing to wait for.”

“Yes,” said Kois.

  


Anameis didn’t ask to stop and say any goodbyes. She led Kois straight to the river, where they found the explorers all gathered on the shore where Laana had been snatched up. Kois heard their voices before she was them milling around and waiting. A few of the bolder ones, led by Kuku, investigated the plant’s remains just up the bank. Anameis hung back behind Kois’ bulk as everyone looked up at their arrival.

“Kois, hey Kois!” Rara, who had been among the nichelings pawing at the split open plant, bounded down the bank to greet her with an energetic headbutt. “Good to see you!” Drawing closer, she whispered in Kois’s ear, “Never could stand princes or princesses. Knew there was something no-good going on here!”

Kois pulled away, and it was then that Rara noticed Anameis by her side. “Heeeey, who is this?” She crouched to her level, being the only nicheling in the party who could come close to rivalling Kois in size. Anameis hopped backwards, ears slightly lowered. A few others had noticed her too, and stopped their talk to watch.

“This is Anameis. You know her. She’s coming with us.” There was no question in Kois’ words, just a statement of what was and would be.

A few murmurs from the watchers, and Rara brightened up. “The one who saved Kois and Laana! Yes, I remember _you!_ Well, anyone who can do that is a friend. Glad to have you along.”

“I… suppose?” Anameis sniffed at Rara’s face in greeting, and jumped when the bigger nicheling offered another friendly headbutt, before laughing and playfully swatting her on the nose with her shrunken paw. “Hey! Is that _it?_ ” The plant, its petals splayed over the grass, caught her attention, and she cautiously loped up to investigate, sniffing at the ground before her.

“It is!” called out Kuku. “You’ve got to tell us all about them!”

Slowly, whiskers twitching, Anameis touched her nose to the nearest petal. Tail held high and fur standing on end, she listened as Kuku showed her the vine where Kois tore it in two. He held it in his nimble paw for her to sniff at it, and she gradually relaxed.

“Don’t worry about them,” Rara said. “Couple of big ones like us, we can take on anything, remember?” She flashed a claw, and bared her teeth in a grin.

“It seems we will have to,” said Kois.

“We’re leaving then?” Rara said.

“In a moment, yes,” said Kois. She scanned her eyes over the assembled nichelings. They all seemed calm to her eyes, as if the surprise of the plants wore off before her arrival and now they waited. Yet some of them looked away, tails twitching, as they noticed her gaze. She ignored it and found the nicheling she wanted sitting on the riverbank, tail curled around her paws, watching her reflection in the water.

Laana didn’t move when Kois came to sit by her side. She held Yuki close to her chest, stroking the tufts that would one day grow into his mane. Even he kept quiet, though he looked up at Kois’ approach. But his eyes focused on her no longer than a heartbeat, and he gazed off into the light filtering from the canopy far above.

“They’ll be fine,” Laana said, never taking her eyes from her reflection. “Some of them thought we were trying to stop them leaving, but they saw me, and… that thing over there.” A shiver rippled down her back. “You don’t have to worry. They’ll listen to you.”

Kois turned an ear back toward the waiting nichelings. As on the cliffs before the storm, she felt the rising tension of a group ready to get back on their paws, wherever the trail ahead may take them. She, like all nichelings, lived her life to no schedule tighter than the rise and fall of sun and moon, but their expedition would not wait much longer. Yet a moment would not hurt. “I’m not worried about _them._ ”

“Oh… no, you needn’t...” Laana touched a paw to the river’s surface. The slow current braided through her claws. Kois expected her to turn away and lean on her shoulder again, but she continued her vigil over the water. “It’s not so bad. I should have seen it. But I haven’t seen anything since I came here.” Sparkling droplets fell, one by one, as she drew her paw up to her chest. “I am… so far from the sea, Kois. So far from the mountains. And I… I fear I might have-”

“No, he was right.”

Kois looked down. Yuki wriggled out from Laana’s gentle hold and walked a nicheling’s length down the bank, stopping with a paw lifted. He gazed down the river, slowly turning his head this way and that as though something lurked in the forest depths, something only his eyes saw. “Ki-Roku, when he said there were mountains. It does get higher up there, and cold and open, like you can see the whole world… I know. I just know.” He touched his chest, and though his tail was turned to Kois, she knew he held his paw over his single gem as he watched the river flow.

His tail swayed, and the moment broke. “Are we going now? We’re all here!” Bounding back to them, he reared up and planted his forepaws on Kois’ shoulder.

“Well… if Kois isn’t waiting for anything…?” said Laana.

“No,” said Kois. “Why don’t you go and tell everyone we’re ready?”

“I will!” And Yuki leapt off into the waiting group, leaving Kois and Laana alone by the shore for a brief moment.

“Do you think he’s right?” said Laana.

_If he was wrong,_ Kois thought,  _then so was I._ “I know  _you_ were.”

“Oh, yes...” Laana watched Yuki mingle with his friends, and chanced a look back up the bank, at the plant’s remains. A flicker of fear passed across her face, and she turned back to the water.

“We’ll be gone from here,” said Kois. Laana deserved better words after her ordeal, but all Kois had was a moment amongst the trees and dappled light, and the smell of earth and hot water. She drew her tail around Laana as she had so many times before, and nuzzled her cheek. Her deep purr emanated once more from her throat. She had no more words than Laana herself, no more understanding. But she understood her thoughts and feelings, the crushing despair when Laana lay still and without breath, and the warm, fearful hope, rising to joy when she opened her eyes. Even now she sat by her side in a state of happy bewilderment. She purred deeper. 

Kois had seen love before. Even if she didn’t understand how, here was no sense in wondering why things were as they were. “I was scared, too.”

Laana’s nimble paw brushed over Kois’ foreleg, holding it tight. “Don’t go anywhere, Kois.”

“I won’t.”


End file.
